Trials/Hot/Wow/Bye:
There are four kinds
of runs where one car runs alone.
BYE - one car runs an A phase and a B phase alone. In the RaceManager,
a true Bye heat occurs only once per division in the first round and only
if the division has an odd number of cars. The car must run in the lane
shown (Lane 1 in A, Lane 2 in B). Functional byes (a car skipping a round)
may occur in later rounds but the single car is not run. The patterns also
'distribute' the byes. That is, if a car received a bye in an early round,
it is not possible for it to be scheduled for a bye in a later round. Using
the 21 car pattern, you can see that
the car placed in Heat 9 gets a first round bye, but runs every other round.
Similarly, the winner of Heat 3 gets a second round bye but runs every
other round. The winner of 31 gets a fourth round bye, etc. Also the loser
of 16, who may have had a bye in Heat 9, must run every round in the loser
bracket.
TRIAL - one car runs a trial run alone. These occur just before Round
1 and only if requested before the Run list is created. The car may run
in either lane.
WOW - in double elimination, the Winner of the Winners (the only car
with no losses) runs alone in either lane just after the winner of the
losers (the remaining car with only one loss.) is determined. This run
is scheduled automatically for each division. It is a special case of Hot
(which is a special case of Trial) and serves not only as a warm-up for
the car and driver but as recognition for the driver who has not yet lost.
HOT - Scheduling double elimination for one division sometimes produces
situations where one car has been waiting a significantly longer time than
the other. Great care has been taken in producing the optimized heat sheets used in the RaceManager software to all but eliminate this problem with a single division. In virtually
all cases any two cars racing will have been forwarded to their current heat
from their previous heats that were exactly one heat apart. For example, if one
car has been waiting 20 heats, the other car has been waiting either 19 or 21 heats.
Doing this manually on-the-fly during race day is all but impossible.
However, the
problem cannot be anticipated when two or more divisions are merged
by rounds since one car could come from the last heat in round 2 and the
other from the first heat in round 3. With the division alone the two cars
have been determined one run apart. With merged divisions, an entire round
of the other division(s) separates them.
This delay is seen as a problem from two perspectives:
-
1. The car is cold, the lubrication is not warm.
-
2. The racer is cold. The racer has had a long time to think of other
things. Their head is not in racing.
The RaceManager scans the completed Run list and adds a 'hot' run
when needed for the car determined first to eliminate this problem. The
'hot' run occurs just before the 'B' phase run that determines the second
car.
For example, the cars assigned to Run 53 were determined in Run 32 and
Run 49. The pairing difference (49 minus 32) is 17; the wait for the second
car (53 minus 49) is 4. An obvious hot/cold problem. One car raced 4 runs
ago, the other 21 runs ago! The usual scheduling of the RaceManager using
the optimized brackets keeps the difference to 2 or 3.
A 'hot' run for the first car is placed just before Run 49 and the Runs
above the 'hot' run are re-numbered. Now the cars in Run 54 (re-numbered
from 53) are determined in Run 49 and Run 50. The difference is 1, the
wait is 4, and the hot/cold problem has been eliminated.
Three numbers and a small formula trigger the creation of hot runs.
'Combined' is the run number when both cars run (i.e. the run that could
be hot/cold). 'First' is the run number when the first car for the Combined
run is determined. ‘Second' is the run number when the second car for the
Combined run is determined. A hot run will be scheduled when the following
conditions are met:
1. Second minus First is greater than 5. (i.e. First has already been
waiting a significant time.)
2. Combined minus Second is less than or equal to Second minus First.
(i.e. Second will wait the same or less time.)
Simplified, this approximately translates to the First car waits
more than twice as long as the Second car. Note that if BOTH cars are cold,
the system doesn't care.
As an example, in a race of 11 Masters and 22 Stock Cars there will
be 143 total runs: 1 bye (A and B), 2 Wow (one each Division), 3 Hot and
136 competition runs. Also, there may be two additional runs in each division
automatically scheduled if the winner of the winners loses to the winner
of the losers.
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