Originally posted by bender
Whilst it's obvious that with todays cells we can increase the race times - lets remember that the additional time needed over the day due to increased race lengths is going to be a big problem - especially at larger meetings, and reducing the number of qualifying rounds might put many racers at an disadvantage.
Remember, regardless of whether you're running for 5min or 8min, it only takes one crash or one failure to ruin a good qualifying run - at least with the current system you know you've got a couple of other rounds to get things right
That is true...8 minute racing will make the day longer, especially if you have 20+ heat like some of the bigger races. That's an extra hour for each round. Really it is up to the racers, do we value the longer run time (more track time) more than the longer duration of the race day. Good point...now I have to go think about that one.
I have seen this time and time again though, in a 5 minute race, I personally believe it is more difficult, near impossible almost to make up for a bad crash in the first turn, especially in a class where everyone's skill level is closely matched. However, in 8 minute racing (in one of the 23T Japan Sportsman nats video that we sell), I saw a guy that crash out due to just back luck in the beginning, caught up to the front of the pack, passed the leader, crashed on its own (the brain fart that we all experience every now and then) and was able to catch up again and finish on the podium. Even just one extra minute (6 min. racing) which we tried during our F1RL series (Tamiya F201 cars) I've seen guys that have a bad start catch up to the leader at the end and battle for the lead. One thing is for sure, to see a guy work through the pack and then challenge the leader makes racing very very exciting
Steve Wang