Originally Posted by
Trips
Why is it that r/c car racing is one of the only forms of racing where the qualifying is longer than the actual race?
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Why not leave the eight minute qualifiers, but instead of using the total of the eight minutes, pull the best lap for each driver during the eight minute qualifier to determine qualifying order?
thoughts?
All valid points and I would certainly like to see it happen. The reality however is that we race in a limited amount of time at our club and to accomodate all classes we have to mercilessly cut down on racing time, so much so, that the best time to have fun is before the heats even start (practice time) when you can drive around until your battery goes flat, or about 20 minutes. Downside is that everybody may be on the track and there's no timing, but then again you may have the whole track to yourself if everybody else isn't ready to practice yet.
But back to the point, imagine a car is bumped and scores a very good lap time (as it can happen very easily) even though the driver is not fast. Say it is crashed and jumps a barrier ahead of the pack just enough to get the best time but not short enough to be discarded by the computer. That means you need to go back and manually discount those laps on the basis of what marshalls/officials see on the track. Only then can you set the grid correctly. But can anyone guarantee that no mistakes will happen with such a system? It sort of defeats the purpose of having electronic timing. Plus, this means more time wasted to validate the lap times and that's exactly where it hurts.
Thsi is a very common occurence at our club and most cars get bumped up or down but oevr five minutes this is somewhat averaged out, so in the end the fats guys end up at the front of the grid anyway. Not sure if only the best lap counted.
Another side effect could be that in heats people would push their cars (overgear or whatever) gambling to score just one phenomenal lap and then in the race change the gearing again to last the five or eight minutes. This is a lot of messing around and not really representative of the driver's skill in the end, I think.
Another thing I have noticed for instance is that I score the best times when I am a certain way away from the pack (somewhat in opposition if that makes sense) and have no traffic to care about around me. This happens after a few laps when I manage to pull away and before I manage to catch up with the last of the pack. But it can happen on the first lap as well when the first car to go in a staggered start has the advantage of a clean track. How do you determine then whose car to start first?