The process of lining up cars for a race has always been a hit and miss type deal. You want to be fair to the racers involved, but you are also responsible for making the race as challenging and competitive as possible for the race fan in the stands. Those are your customers and they go a long way into paying the purse for the event.
1. What is the best method in the race fan's opinion could a race promoter or racing organization develop that would accomplish this rather difficult task?
2. The next question would be what are the draw backs to each method?
Originally Posted by DAD:
The process of lining up cars for a race has always been a hit and miss type deal. You want to be fair to the racers involved, but you are also responsible for making the race as challenging and competitive as possible for the race fan in the stands. Those are your customers and they go a long way into paying the purse for the event.
1. What is the best method in the race fan's opinion could a race promoter or racing organization develop that would accomplish this rather difficult task?
2. The next question would be what are the draw backs to each method?
Honest Dad himself
This would be better served as a separate thread rather than hijacking the Sheldon Kinser Memorial Race thread by the Bloomington Speedway. We don't need this discussion on this particular thread.
Mike
Be nice to people on the way up. You might need them on the way down. Jimmy Durante
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Promoters are fair to the racers by allowing them the chance to qualify. What the racers do with that chance is on them.
Fans get to see better racing because racers must race for starting feature positions during the heat race.
Drawbacks to the draw only.
At every show a fan attends... You always have the big name drivers who are usually perceived as being the "fast guys". The pill draw separates these guys in many different heat race starting positions. Some guys start last row while others end up front row. This is entirely based on the "luck" of the draw.
If a driver gets a good pill draw, they have the advantage over other drivers with bad pill draws before a single engine fires.
This usually creates a feature lineup with fast guys spread out all over the field.
I want to see those "fast guys" lineup side by side for the feature so I can watch them battle for 20, 25, or 30 laps. Kokomo's system accomplishes this more than the silly luck of the draw format.
Drawback to Qualifying
Adding single car qualifying tends to burn up the racing surface.
Kokomo Speedway does their qualifying during hot laps so they don't add more laps to the racing surface and that does NOT burn up the track.
The only real drawback to Kokomo style qualifying format is the promoters cost of transponders & timing equipment.
Kokomo does a draw to separate the cars into heats; hotlapping/qualifying is grouped by heats, and qualifying is for within the heat only. This is probably the most fair, as everyone in the heat has the exact same track conditions and it doesn't matter if another flight has it better or worse.
That being said, I've always been a fan of single-car qualifying, mostly because it's the only time you can focus on and appreciate an individual performance.
