Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I apologize.  Poor choice of words.  Analogy only.  You may find it hard to believe, but I'm not overly political and think the extremes on both sides of the aisle are nuts.  Within my circle of friends, talking politics is not allowed when we are playing poker, fishing, at the races, or out for a beer at the local watering hole----we have diverse political leanings.  Enough politics, I'll get back to racing.

What I should have said was, I don't support handicapping of faster cars.  I am aware that most tracks and formats do a pretty good job of making sure this doesn't happen at the current time.  (besides formats like the ridiculous King's Royal format)  I'm just thankful that the small minority who want the fastest cars to tag the field every single night, are not in charge, and pray their voices are never heard.  

So you are the self appointed political moderator of this site now? You don't start political discussions but you feel you are the one that needs to end them. Strawser has the final say in track prep and you have the final say in politics, you sir are in good company. Birds of a feather.

Ahhh the Nationals must be approaching...as people start bitching about Knoxvilles format

Nah, there's a certain post some of us look forward to every year in order to let us know Nationals is approaching. I haven't seen it...... yet.

No. In my format the heats are of the utmost importance because they would line up the a main. Time trials line up the heats, heats line up the feature. I suppose to make it more equal you could throw in an invert of the top 6 or a draw. But that would be too much like socialism for my taste. 

OK, thanks!

Not the moderator, just a guy with as much right to voice my opinion as anyone else

Its not even political to say that racing formats have nothing to do with politics! 

Egras explained himself, its all OK with me now

IMO the closest thing to a perfect format, that is both entertaining and fair to the competitors is the old all-star format that is/was used for PA speedweek and other special races in central PA. You time against the cars in your heat - this evens out the luck of the pill draw and changing track conditions for TT order. Invert 4 for the heats. The winner of the heat plus quick timer in the heat make the re-draw. QT still needs to qualify through his heat(top 5 for 4 heats, top 6 for 3 heats). If QT wins the heat, then he is the only one who makes the re-draw. This really puts importance and racing excitement back into the heat races. Feature is lined by re-draw cars at the front and the rest via heat race finish - with B main qualifiers at the rear. B Main also lined up via heat finish. I like the randomness of a re-draw for the top 6-8 cars. Makes it fun, gives the drivers a little mic time which is good for the fans.

I never cared for points formats for single night shows. Keep it simple! Plus I've rarely seen this system result in a good feature. Passing points awarded to drivers because they benefited from a crash or cars dropping out is just plain silly. 

IMO handicapping still works fine for local races. There was a time about 10-20 years ago when everyone was so even it was hard to pass. Handicapping was getting to be too much for the top teams to overcome and races were regularly won by guys that didn't pass anyone all night. The pendulum has kind of swung back at least in central PA, to where there's only a few dominant cars at each track again. The obvious problem with handicapping is that it discourages non-regulars from showing up. The system I believe PA tracks use now is a hybrid in which the heat races are lined up by draw (sometimesgroup tt's) and fewer cars are inverted for the feature 8-9 instead of 12. It's an excellent compromise. I grew up on handicapped regular shows and it still works. Time trials were a rarity reserved for big shows and touring series.

FWIW I prefer 10 lap heats.

A