Large pack race format?

[CM02WS6]

I'm the derby chair for a pack of ~120 scouts and curious about how some other large packs run their derbies.

Currently, we split into two time slots, Tiger/Wolf and Bear/Webelos/AOL. Each of those slots is two hours, with a sibling and adult race in the middle. We race by rank and then award the top two trophies per den, and those two cars are then invited back for a pack race. Those ~34 cars in the pack race then run in each lane again (six lane track) to determine the top 8 cars for a final elimination bracket to award the pack overall top 4. So, with check-in starting at 7:00 and racing at 8:00, we finish up at about 1:00. Our derby and lineup system this year ran extremely efficiently, so we had almost a 45 minute gap from the end of the rank races to the start of the pack race scheduled for 12:00. We will condense those time slots a little next year, but chose not to attempt that this year because it was our first year with the new six lane track.

The main question we're asking is whether we continue with the additional pack-level race after the conclusion of the rank races. The adults could see that there were no real surprises in the fast cars, so wonder what's the point. However, I think many of those 34 kids do enjoy seeing their cars race another several times

So, what do some of the other large packs out there do to structure their derby day? Thanks!

 

[Brian Stanley]

I can see the adults side of things a bit, maybe cut out the final elimination bracket (8 cars?) Run the top cars from each den, six heats, this determines the overall champion/top four. On the other hand, if you can get all of this racing done in 4 hours, and the kids enjoy it, then I say go for it.

What software are you using for the race? If you're using Grand Prix there is a mode that does dynamic heats (you might actually know this already ). After the first round of heats the software start grouping cars of similar speed together, this makes for tighter, more exciting races and more winners of individual heats. If you're not doing this already it might be a way to increase interest among the adults and scouts.

 

[txchemist]

The dynamic will also tell you when you do not need to run anymore races. I often turn off the time display and just show place while computer keeps time for brackets, WAY more interest because they do not see the time until race is over.

 

[CM02WS6]

Thanks for the tips! This year was our first year with the new six lane track, and we also went to the PPN scheduling method and running by combined ranks (17 to 33 cars per group). This helped for us to run more efficiently because there were only a few times we had to wait for cars to return to the start. Even then, our average turnaround time was 55 seconds, which seemed pretty quick for six lanes.

The dynamic scheduler sounds interesting. I read about it and it recommends you run at least an equal number of phases as lanes you have. So how many heats would that be? It didn't really explain that. I think it sounds interesting, but would need to have an idea of heat number for scheduling reasons.

Not displaying time or speed is also interesting. We pretty much knew that decent cars were in the 220 "mph" range, which is nice for kids to have a bearing of their performance. However, all the adults could tell pretty quickly which cars were going to place really high.

 

[CM02WS6]

Also, are kids ever confused about their performance if they see their car win heats but not earn a trophy? I figure we'd explain how it works while the race is running, but still may expect the question "hey, my car won two heats but I didn't get a trophy???"

 

[txchemist]

Most kids have seen racing series on TV where the points are accumulated over many races and then a champ is determined, they will get it faster than about 1/2 the adults.

 

[Pinewoodguy]

Do what the Northstar council does, use two tracks.
They also do times but they run each level to the end, then the top 6 are invited back to the finals.
6 time slots plus the finals and as that runs they run the sibling and dad races. They have down to a science, but they have to since there are 25,000 scouts in the council!