Ideas about the Spring Championships

[bedsrcmcc]

With just one round left now for the clubs Winter Championships, I'm now thinking forward to the clubs Spring Championships that start on Friday 23 April 2010 - that's right, only 4 open meetings in between the championships!!

Anyway, we are going to keep the points system as they are now that's for certain and running best of 5 from 7 will also remain but I wanted to put some ideas out there for club members to discuss as alternative ways of running the Championship.

Now I appreciate that many users view these posts who are not members of the club, we always appreciate your posts and thoughts, but I want to get the thoughts and views of our club members so come on guys, do not feel afraid to have your say...

Firstly we can change nothing and run as we have this time, that's always an option, but I have some ideas up for discussion as follows:

• Rather than having the same track throughout the championship, having a diffferent one from our selection of 20+ tracks each round
• Running 2 x 2min Q heats and 2 x 6min Finals
• Running 3 heats of 1:18th rather than the crowded 2 heats, though this option would require us to look seriously at running until 11pm which with the current numbers racing will not leave the club out of pocket

Feel free to comment and offer other ideas which we will put to the vote before we start the Spring Championships.

[bedsrcmcc]

Another thought...

Should we limit tyres to one compound rather than having choice of minipins or rally blocks so that all drivers are running on the same tyre to level out any potential gain from one or the other?

Again, this is just a thought to get the discussion going...

[mc_mclovin]

Just a thought on this one....which i hope to be joining in on!! time permitting!!

Maybe for the 7 rounds, use 3 track layouts...with each being used twice each during the championships, round 1 through 6, and a vote by all involved in said championship (taken once each track has been run once) to decide which track to run for a third time in the final round!

hope that makes sense...means that drivers have a chance to learn a track, develop/tweak setups etc...but stops the familiarity of running just one track all championship.

[bedsrcmcc]

Originally Posted by mc_mclovin

Just a thought on this one....which i hope to be joining in on!! time permitting!!

Maybe for the 7 rounds, use 3 track layouts...with each being used twice each during the championships, round 1 through 6, and a vote by all involved in said championship (taken once each track has been run once) to decide which track to run for a third time in the final round!

hope that makes sense...means that drivers have a chance to learn a track, develop/tweak setups etc...but stops the familiarity of running just one track all championship.

I like that idea, I was thinking of something similar on the lines of two tracks, but three would add a little more spice. I for one have got bored of the track we are currently running, I guess my drop in form has not helped We have 22 track layouts so we might as well play with them...

[Ross]

7 Rounds.....7 different tracks, qualifying is for learning the track. Which then leads to too the next question, why don't we have 3 qualifying and 1 final?

[bedsrcmcc]

Originally Posted by Ross

7 Rounds.....7 different tracks, qualifying is for learning the track. Which then leads to too the next question, why don't we have 3 qualifying and 1 final?

Interesting... would you have 3 x 3min qualifying and a longer single final maybe, say 6 or 7 mins?

[Smartalec]

Originally Posted by Ross

7 Rounds.....7 different tracks, qualifying is for learning the track. Which then leads to too the next question, why don't we have 3 qualifying and 1 final?

[Ross]

Originally Posted by Smartalec

[Ross]

Originally Posted by bedsrcmcc

Interesting... would you have 3 x 3min qualifying and a longer single final maybe, say 6 or 7 mins?

I think that's the way to go Scott

[hashiriya]

changing tracks each week I have no problem with.

I'm not convinced about 6-7 minute finals. I would rather have 5 minute quali and 5 minute finals to be honest. It's difficult to concentrate past 5 minutes and the driving standard will just deteriate causing stress and breakage. Also with same length quali and finals, its easier to compare how quickly you are going and whether you are continuing to improve or not.

whether its 3 quali and 1 final or 2 and 2 is of no concern to me but 4 x 5minute runs gets my vote.

[Smartalec]

I agree, five minute qualifying is the "norm" and what most people are used to so that would be good and to have the final set to the same duration would be excellent. So 3 rounds of five minute qualifying and 1 five minute final gets my vote

[Ross]

Originally Posted by hashiriya

changing tracks each week I have no problem with.

I'm not convinced about 6-7 minute finals. I would rather have 5 minute quali and 5 minute finals to be honest. It's difficult to concentrate past 5 minutes and the driving standard will just deteriate causing stress and breakage.

We do 7 minute qualifiers and between 15 and 30 mins finals in Nitro .
Having said that, the long finals may explain my driving .

All the 5's sound good

[HPI Paul]

I am well up for a new track each week and the 3 quals and 1 final, all 5 mins. This would mean 4 mins extra per heat x 6 heats (3 tc and looks like 3 buggy to avoid the congested heats we had on Friday) = potentially finish at 11 pm if everyone is ok with that.

[bedsrcmcc]

Originally Posted by HPI Paul

I am well up for a new track each week and the 3 quals and 1 final, all 5 mins. This would mean 4 mins extra per heat x 6 heats (3 tc and looks like 3 buggy to avoid the congested heats we had on Friday) = potentially finish at 11 pm if everyone is ok with that.

If the view is 4 x 5min races, either 2 rounds and 2 finals or 3 rounds and 1 final, I'd have to do some calculations to work out the time needed to run all races, especially if we go down the 6 heats route.

If we were to go 6 heats then I would have to seriously consider putting a maximum limit on drivers each week as adding another heat might be just too tight, but let me play with the numbers...

What do others think about 4 x 5min races?

[associatedtc3]

3 qualifiers and 1 final gets my vote as this would stop people tieing in the finals with qualifying positions deciding the points. I would like 5 min qualifiers if we can fit it all in by 11pm but i dont think we should limt numbers with the club still looking to grow. Cheers Andy

[hashiriya]

just one more thing to add, if we are going to extend the day duration as suggested above, can me make the start 6:30 rather than the finish 11:00? I know it might be difficult for everyone to be there for 6:30 ut if we can get the track set and racing before 7:30 that should allow us to finish at a reasonable time.

[bedsrcmcc]

Originally Posted by hashiriya

just one more thing to add, if we are going to extend the day duration as suggested above, can me make the start 6:30 rather than the finish 11:00? I know it might be difficult for everyone to be there for 6:30 ut if we can get the track set and racing before 7:30 that should allow us to finish at a reasonable time.

I think the problem with the earlier start is that there are a lot of us, me included who actually find it hard enough to get their for 7pm. We have quite a large catchment area with our club members.

What we need to do is get the track laying sorted quicker. We really should be racing earlier than 8pm each week. Maybe with a move to 3 Q Rounds we can scrap practice. You could say that the first round is a more controlled practice for you to get your eye in and settle the car with a push in rds 2 and 3 with the finals.

Oh and the part about restricting numbers this will only come into play if required, as with any indoor club, there has to be a limit reached at some point. Thankfully we are some way off that happening just yet, but we have to be aware and prepared to sort something out as and when required. Always better to be prepared...

PS. Speaking as a parent who has a young son that races at the club, the late finish for me is personally not an issue as he does not have school the next day, and to be honest he's still up at the crack of dawn next day anyway!

[Ross]

Scrapping the practice at the beginning is not a bad idea. Most Nitro races will have a 2 min warm up/practice at the beginning of the 1st qualifier, how does that sound ?

[ek9russ]

Why not try the 3 qualifiers and 1 final in the open meetings and see how it goes? If we do decide to use it next championship and it doesn’t work, we can always change it for the next championship

The only downside I can see of running different tracks is it may take longer to lay them down each week. As with just using the one, the people that lay the track get use to what goes where and how it needs to be tweaked from the plans

Regarding tyres I think we should stick with any yellow Schumacher tyre; wide/narrow mini pins or rally blocks for the touring cars, most people have a set of the different ones now. Also in both championships we have had so far Schumacher has sold out of at least one of these at some point…

[hashiriya]

I’ve done some calculations and if you run a meeting with 6 heats and 4 rounds of racing (whether they be quail or finals) you will need about 3 hours of racing time form the moment the first heat starts to when the last final ends (technically it will be 2:54 but you need to allow a few extra seconds on to each race to allow people to finish their laps) if you ran all races at 5 minutes, had a 2 minute gap between heats and a 10 minute gap to work out finals.

Given that it takes about 20-30 minutes normally to get the track laid, you are realistically looking at a start time of about 7:40. This would mean that racing finishes at about 10:40-10:45 giving another 15 minutes until 11 to clear the track. That fits in just to the new proposed timings.

With 5 heats, the race time is reduced to 2:30 which then means that the current 10:30 end time is still possible.

This all relies on getting the track out and being able to run heat 1 at 7:40 on the dot with no exceptions. Practice time can fit in around that I guess. Once the track is done and cleared for practice to begin, free practice can run until heat 1 starts so the quicker the track goes out, the more time there is for practice. I think that’s incentive enough for everyone to help and get it done more efficiently.