Introducing a new “shadow championship” to Gurston Down Speed Hillclimb
All year we have been running a new test competition to trial something new and see if helps with a few challenges we see
- people not incentivised to compete on days of non-perfect conditions (time based points)
- not all cars can be competitive, so creates a barrier to entry for newcomers
- to make more cars competitive we introduce more classes
- too many classes means too few cars per class, an average of less than 5 cars per class
The aim is
“Allow anyone to fairly compete & be competitive in essentially any vehicle and be able to compete on any day with whatever conditions”
and secondarily to “stem the proliferation of classes”
Goal: Ultimately appeal to more people in bigger variety of cars and stem the proliferation of classes and reward performance on bad weather/track days
the championship works through handicapping. Lots of competitive sports use handicapping to level the field of play, some are based on equipment (sailing) some are based on ability (golf). But there are lots of other handicapped competitions
Drag racing, Dial-In in Bracket Racing; declare a time for a run you will not beat
Cycling; usually reduced mileage
and Speedway, Chess, Go, Sailing, Gliding, Tennis, Basketball, all have handicapping systems
Lots of different approaches were considered and simulated. But this year the new PaCAC championship is managing a target time for every competitor and reducing it when you beat it. It also adjusts it for each run by considering the times of all the competitors relative to their target times. Points are determined relative to this adjusted target time. Points are accrued over the whole season.
More information can be found on the competitions page
We hope this will provide a new competition that adds a new element and shows how we may equalise without formal classes and refine the concept in future seasons.