Tournament Challenge _ July 24

[YAnderson]

Brian will be at the track at 7:30 to help both days.

[Reijo]

Brian will be at the track at 7:30 to help both days.

Thanks!  See you tonight (if I can get the course designs and some work done before night!) or else tomorrow morning!

Reijo

[Reijo]

Course designs, maps, waivers, tech forms all done but I'm still in Calgary .... guess I'm on the road early!   

[majormojo]

Have fun folks, I'm not making it down this weekend. Stuck in Edmonton, racing Spec Miata (awwww). 

[Wayne Dyck]

Tournament Challenge Details

SASC will host a competitive, non championship event, loosely based on the SCCA Match Tour concept, to allow local level participants to expand their competitive skills.
The event will be restricted to 48 pre-registered participants only, no same day entries allowed.
Membership has it’s privileges, which in this case means pre-registration preference will be give to SASC club members firstly, after which any remaining spots will be filled by WCMA club affiliate members.

Event format will consist of 3 run groups, 16 participants / run group, allowed 2 or 3 qualifying runs each for PAX elimination ladder placement 1 - 48.
This sets the 48 car elimination ladder order for 3 new run groups, based on the Pax qualifying order, to make 4 runs each, working through the ladder (16 - 8 - 4 - 2) to 1 finalist for the prize monies run off.
Competitors will be running off of their individual qualifying index at this point, PAX is only to set the 48 car ladder order. Any breakouts to qualifying index will be assigned this breakout time as their new index going forward. Equal opportunity for all levels of participants is the goal.
As this is a competitive event, and to maintain fairness, there will not be any ride-a-longs allowed.
Winners of each 16 car ladder run group will have 1 final run each for event podium placement.

1st Place Prize   $300
2nd Place Prize   $150
3rd Place Prize   $75   

Event registration details will be forwarded to SASC club members and opened online to WCMA club affiliate members later in June. Entry fee will be $40, a bump of $10 to fund prize monies.

OK... So I'm looking for some feedback on today's Challenge Event. I trust you all had a good time.
This challenge style of run format is great fun... IMHO. I've been fortunate enough to participate in 2 such challenges at SCCA Pro Solo events.
So, my intent was to bring some of this competitive fun to our local level.
The format rewards consistency, more than anything else. Normalizes for car prep level and participant experience.
Basically everyone has an equal opportunity to advance to the next round in the challenge ladder.
Tell me what you think...

[Terry Johns]

Thanks Wayne for all the effort and enthusiasm you put into this. My feed back would be I didn't speak to one person who really understood what was happening.

[Canuck]

I thought it was great fun.  Now that we've done it once, I'm sure most people will understand the mechanics!  I like that it allows for novices, like myself, to finally scrap a little for the top no matter how new we are to the sport. 

Craig

[Mkelder]

I agree with Terry, I think because it was so new and foreign people were not sure how it worked. Basically, it was hard to explain to people that you were competing against yourself first and foremost. You set your benchmark and had to focus your skills to complete a similar run.

If you set a 50.000 time in the morning and never got even .001 slower than it you'd win the day. If you look at the ladder Wayne posted up you will see how close some of the decision time splits were.

The whole catch is while you are trying to maintain your best, your opposed competitor is doing the same. If his/her set time was 35.999 and during competition could not repeat that feat and scored 37 they loose.

I think the main point is that, as usual, you are always racing yourself in autox. The PAX system was setup so you can (with a grain of salt) compare your time to a competitor which drives a different vehicle and see how you stand.

What today's competition did is remove the pax equation. You still try to run your best but places the added pressure by creating a single run where you are asked to hit your benchmark and if you don't and your competition does they win.

Before my post gets insanely large, ID like to say I really enjoyed the new format. I'm hoping not too many people shy away from the foreign setup before trying to understand the format.

[Mkelder]

I want to give a shout out to Craig. I ran the timing during your runs with Wayne overseeing the times. You continually posted consistent times to your benchmark and served as a model to what this system attempts to achieve, I'm glad you enjoyed it and way to show off your driving abilities!

[NickST]

I like the idea that anybody can win this style of event just based on their own driving skill rather than on a car + tires + pax.

I also think it would be a lot of fun for a group of SASC members to pitch in for a cheap beater and then run a mini championship on a few of our practice days with it.

[Terry Johns]

Looking ahead to the August weekend I see its advertised as: "WCMA Day 1 and Tournament Challenge", what is a Tournament Challenge ? Is it the same as what we ran yesterday ?

[Sprockett]

If you set a 50.000 time in the morning and never got even .001 slower than it you'd win the day.

Not sure if this was an purposeful over simplification or there is confusion but I don't want to let that statement create more confusion as it is not accurate.  In the end, to move on in each round you have to go (relatively) faster than the person you are matched up again. In your example, if you run a 50.000 all day but you're opponent happens to go faster than their indexed time, you will lose that round.

[Stan]

I like the idea that anybody can win this style of event just based on their own driving skill rather than on a car + tires + pax.

I also think it would be a lot of fun for a group of SASC members to pitch in for a cheap beater and then run a mini championship on a few of our practice days with it.

Like a Kia Cee'd? 

[zero10]

This is probably a stupid question but what is in place to stop somebody from deliberately sandbagging their first run then making incremental improvements through the day?...

Some interesting results in the ladder - in Run Group 3, round 4 both Matthew K and Sean D got SLOWER in their runs, but Sean got less slower.... actually, Matthew K looks to have run his fastest time of the day in the 1st round, and still he made it to the 4th!  Similar situation with Cam!

[NickST]

I like the idea that anybody can win this style of event just based on their own driving skill rather than on a car + tires + pax.

I also think it would be a lot of fun for a group of SASC members to pitch in for a cheap beater and then run a mini championship on a few of our practice days with it.

Like a Kia Cee'd?

I was thinking more like a Mazda 323 or a Toyota Echo

However I enjoyed the top gear reference!

One of the things I enjoy most is going head to head against people in the same car. I think it would be pretty fun anyway.