Pole position

[craig smith]

Can you explain how pole position works for the finals as in round one of the 1/18th i won the first heat with fastest lap also heat two i won with fastest lap heat three i was second but with fastest lap but second on the grid just wondered

[bedsrcmcc]

The 3 heats are qualifying heats for the final. Basically you have 3 attempts to get the best time to secure TQ. Winning a single heat or two has no bearing on the pole position if another driver gets a faster time in the third.

As I have always tried to stress to everyone at the club that you are racing against the computer in the heats and only against each other in the final.

For example, a driver in a different heat to you can take pole if their time is faster than yours, even though they did not race directly with you in the heat.

In relation to your own experience in Round 1, you secured the TQ after Heat 1 and Heat 2, but in Heat 3 Adam got a better time and took TQ for the Micros and hence the pole for the final.

Hope that answers your queston

[hashiriya]

Please don't be offended if I sound patronising here Craig so please ignore this if you already know how it works, but there are several type of ranking that are applied to RC racing when determining a grid. The two most commonly used are called "FTQ" and "round by round"

FTQ qualifying takes the single best time by a competitor and ranks them in that order. This is the system we use at this club also. It seems that after round 2, you had posted the fastest time of the class but in round 3, the one guy who beat you went round in a quicker time than your fastest of the day. don't forget that the fastest single lap has not bearing on the result and its purly based on the number of laps you do and if that is the same, its determined by the amount of time it takes to do those laps.

a 5 minute race is 300 seconds long but you also get a few seconds to finish the lap you had started before the 5 minutes was up. The result is therefore show in the following format

20:304.35

which is 20 laps completed in 304.35 seconds. If for example someone else had a time of 20:302.15 then that would be a faster time becasue they completed the same number of laps in less time.

FTQ qualifying doesn't care in which round you did your quickest time or how good/bad the other times were. As long as you get 1 good 5 minute run in then you're in for a good qualifying position.

Round by round is slightly different in how it works and is often favoured in classes and competitions where the conditions are changeable through the qualifying session.

Round by round takes the times of all competitors times in each round and gives each one a score for that round only. for example the fastest person in a round may get 1 point, the 2nd fastest 2 points and so on. After all rounds are completed, the person with the best score (not necessarily lowest as sometime they give more points to the fastest people, sometime they give less) is given pole position. It is common that before competition begins, the race organiser lets the competitiors know how many of the scores are counted for qualifying. For example it may be best 2 out of 3 rounds, meaning that you need to get a good position in at least 2 rounds to stand a chance of getting a good qualifying position. It also means that that the fastest person may not be on pole if they are not consistent enough through the rounds.

I hope that makes some sense and if there are any members who are not too sure of any aspect of how the race meeting works, please ask and I'm sure the rest of us will try and help and explain.

[bedsrcmcc]

That's what I tried to say in fewer words :thumbsup:

[craig smith]

Cheers guys i get it now:thumbsup::thumbsup: