I thought I'd pass on some experience with edurance-type racing.
The events I have competed in are 6-hour team events, but the principal
is the same.
Teams comprise of two or more cars. Teams are encouraged to be
"similar" but it isn't a requirement. Some teams in the past have been
all spridgets, all cooper S, all jag, all lotus elite, etc etc. No
formula cars in our events but again, principle will still work.
Each driver/car combo (some cars have multiple drivers) must qualify
on the Saturday. In the local event your "nominated lap time" is
computed from your qualifying times. In the interstate event, you get
to nominate your own time.
If you lap faster than the nominated time, the lap doesn't count.
If you lap slower than the nominated time, you get a penalty of the
number of seconds you missed the time by.
Both events worked on the overall handicap by a formula :
Fastest car does 1/2 the time, 2nd fastest car does 1/4 time, 3rd
fastest car does 1/4 time.
You can then work out the # target laps.
This means that you have the best chance of winning on handicap if
you have cars/drivers of similar performance. One time we did have
this (< 1 sec b/n 5 drivers), the worst case was when the fastest
car/driver was about 4 secs/lap faster (1:53 at Eastern Creek, the
others were 1:57 (me), 1:59, 2:03). The 1:53 was the fastest spridget
around (a full-on tube-frame, tele-shock, multi-link suspension etc)
and the rest of us were driving vintage racing type spridgets.
At the end of the day there were outright winners and handicap
winners. The major prize was the handicap winner.
We finished 8th on handicap despite the big difference in qualifying
times (we were only 10 secs behind 6th on handicap!). There were 42
teams.
At the Winton event one of our spridget teams came second outright and
3rd on handicap.
The handicap-type event is great, it adds a bit of interest to the
event for spectators and those competitors in cars that aren't
outright contenders (like our spridgets!). By also awarding prizes for
outright, you still reward the fastest car/driver combos.
Mike
_______________________________________________________________________
Mike Gigante
3D interactive graphics, Virtual Reality, british sports cars, and wine
http://mega.cgl.rmit.edu.au/~mg/ mg@mega.cgl.rmit.edu.au
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