Thanks everyone for your feedback on our proposal at the club meeting last night.  We were very pleased with the positive response we received. 

At the next meeting we are hoping to present the final revision to the membership for a vote to adopt the new system for the 2015 year.

There were a number of suggestions for clarifications to the definitions, all of which we are going include in our updated proposal.

I'd like to get some wider feedback on a couple of concerns raised by members at the meeting:
1) the current system does not count non-club members when determining your finishing position.   The proposed system would count "visitors".  We believe that everyone who turns up to an event should count.   This has several effects, firstly if you raced against a visitor and they get first place we feel you have earned second place.  Secondly for a small class if you beat the visitor you get the points for beating them and thirdly their presence would count toward average number participants per race for the year getting your class closer to the required minimum.

2) We have proposed that one race weekend's points (3 races) would be dropped allowing people who miss a weekend for mechanical or personal reasons remain competitive.  Some members believe that every race should count.

If anyone would like raise any additional issues or comment on the ones mentioned here, please feel free to contact me or Doug or to follow up in this thread.

Thanks.
Rod.

The proposal can be downloaded here: http://www.sccbc.net/data/2015/2015%20Awards%20and%20Points%20Review.pdf

Darwin, we intend for the lowest scoring 3 races over the year to be dropped.  We settled on 3 races so that a driver could miss a single weekend with minimal penalty.

This still offers a slight advantage to a driver who attends every weekend.

As to the parallel between the CACC and SCCBC per class awards: you are correct they become very similar.  This is more complicated.  Our problem is, that we'd like to see per class awards at the SCCBC level especially for recognition at the annual banquet.  My understanding is that the CACC system is in the CACC rules and rule change submissions for this year are long gone, so we have no ability to change the CACC system for this year.  We decided to put forward the proposal that we thought was best for SCCBC for this year.  Then, depending on how this works this year, we could propose a CACC rule change for next year.

The primary motivation for the review of the points system, was to address several requests to review the fairness of the current system.  We did quite a lot of analysis of how points were assigned over the last 2 years ... here is a sample of some issues we found.

Our session with largest number of cars of a single class was 15.  The winner of that race was awarded 16 points - 9 points for winning plus 7 points being in front of 14 cars.  However a typical race for most of our drivers would only have 3 to 6 cars per class. Giving the winner 10 to 12.5 points per race.  This meant that drivers in our smaller classes (which is more than 50% of the club) could not realistically expect to win the championship.

The other issue we are trying to address is the large number of single car races over last few years.   We hope the new system will encourage drivers, who have choice in which class they run, to join together into larger groups.  Under the new system a lone driver in a class will get 19 points.  If they join a class with 3 other cars, they are still guaranteed at least 19 points but with the potential of getting 25.  We were not wanting to be punitive to drivers who don't have a choice but to run with small numbers, but we hope to encourage consolidation where possible.

Having developed a system that tracks points on a per class basis, it was a logical extension to give out per class awards too, based on those points, with the added benefit of making them relevant at the banquet.

With regards to the CACC system: our mandate was to look at the SCCBC points system so our committee did not discuss CACC changes and have no specific recommendation regarding CACC points or awards at this time.

Thanks for the detail, Rod.  I can appreciate how much work goes into all this; I don't mean to antagonize, just engage in the discussion.  One could do a PhD thesis on the History of Points Allocation in Motorsports & Perceived Fairness - and still not get agreement from a room full of drivers!

Here are some of my thoughts.  Presently, points are allocated based on attendance + reliability + performance, and in the case of the 1/2 points for the drivers you finish ahead of, performance relative to the size of the field.  You need all 3 components (or 4) to score points.  If you remove the worst 3 races from the equation, you're placing more weight on performance than attendance and reliability - which is fine, if that is the intention and people agree that this should be weighted more heavily.

For the relative performance component, I like what you're suggesting.  Basically, by awarding full points to a class with 4+ starters (with a sliding scale down with lower class attendance), and no additional points beyond that, you are addressing the 'class of 1' issue while making it possible for entrants in mid-size classes to compete for the championship.  Again, the point where points drop off, and how fast could be debated - but not by me.

That being said, I don't see the need to award by class in SCCBC if CACC already is.  I do like the idea of having awards that transcend the class divisions, particularly because that is how our racing happens on the track.  Which I'll address in my next post...

Cheers,
Darwin

I hope we do not have to drop 3 races worth of points but I will try my best all year long no matter what is decided.

Thanks for the feedback Doug.  I agree that a club championship gives drivers something additional to strive for (other than the CACC class championship), and that it could better reflect the full depth of competition that club drivers face.

But, I disagree that if there were no class championship awards at CACC, and both SCCBC and CACC were proposing to introduce them, that the SCCBC would be the natural choice.  They are CACC classes - that body defines them and determines the rules that must be adhered to to compete in them.  Why wouldn't they be the natural choice to give out awards?

You doubt that there will be identical class winners between CACC and the SCCBC awards, but the only difference is dropping the lowest 3 scoring races (which it appears has some very justifiable and vocal opposition - here's another: it doesn't promote higher attendance, which is bad all around), and some possible as yet undefined cross-pollination from the ICSCC.  There may be no harm, but I don't see any benefit either.

If the objective is to improve the experience of our club members who participate in the full slate of races put on by SCCBC, my constructive suggestion is this: modify the existing Group Championships and stay away from the largely redundant Class Championships.

If you want awards that better reflect the full depth of competition that club drivers face why not have them based on the run group in which they face competition: Open Wheel, Closed Wheel 1, Closed Wheel 2, Time Attack, Vintage, and ICSCC groups?  Doesn't the SCCBC determine which CACC classes get put together into the run groups?  So, the natural choice seems to be for the SCCBC to award the best drivers in those groups.  Base it on the proposed 1-4+ cars per class sliding scale of points, but run group specific (in the existing proposal, someone running in both CW1 and CW2 would only get recognition for one of those, which ignores half of their efforts).

6c worth.

Cheers,
DO

Yes, only SCCBC Club Members would be eligible for Class or Group Awards. Non-SCCBC drivers racing with us at Mission would receive the usual race event trophies if they made the podium, but no points for the club championship.

Darwin wrote on Feb 14^th, 2015 at 10:56am:


would people find this more acceptable if you could only drop the scores from races that had you entered?

or if the number was lower ... like 1 or 2 races?