2018 Regs and Explainations

[Barry S]

Hang on the mists might be clearing here,,, so lower the target times for all but put in place a bonus score of some kind for beating an established (or calculated) class record??

That way we have sense of achievement for achieving target as per Stu's comment but also reward for an exceptional day???

Thoughts??

[woodman]

Yes Barry.

But you dont really need a bonus

By lowering - I meant to say 'Soften'

This would be done to All classes at All venues by the same ammount - say 20%

Terry it will still mean the fastest driver will win because they will beat the TT by the biggest margin.

It is only a PR exercise really

[woodman]

Barry - your 29 sec run at SW in Class D is unobtainable for most

But if the TT was , say 34 secs  most would achieve it and be very pleased with themselves

You would still score the most points tho if you repeated it

[Barry S]

Yeh but its a 2 way PR exercise as the experienced competitor should be recognised for beating an established record hence some form of bonus?

 

Win win everyone gets an attainable target but exceptional drives get just recognition,,,

[woodman]

But a ' bonus ' is hard to set. and convert to points

Your time would be your score still , in the same way it is now.

If you did, say a 28 at SW , then you would score even more

So someone doing a 34 at SW would get 100 points , whereas your 29 would be about 113 ( not sure on the actual math )

[mark.anson]

Target times and the scoring system has been a bone of contention since they were introduced. 

Personally I have always been on the fence as to whether TTs was/is the right scoring system and still have reservations but I am more convinced it's the right thing after we evaluated different scoring systems this year. 

It confirmed that there is no perfect scoring system. 

Its a very difficult balance to achieve a system that attracts and retain novices whilst maintaining the interest of the established competitors who have supported the SS for many years. 

Over the years the SSOT have attempted to tweak the regs in an attempt to make it fair for everyone and have been criticised for changing the regs too often and using calculated target times where they were deemed too soft or difficult. The aim is to introduce some stability and to some extent simplicity's into the regs.

You can't win, it seems.

Making the TTs softer would be as others have said a PR exercise but playing devils advocate there's an  argument that you could make the target times twice as hard in all classes but whatever you do the fastest people will still win their respective classes whether they are a novice or expert. 

In many ways the old 17pt for a class win scoring system was better in terms of attracting novices as you were scored on your place in your WSCC class on the day so a novice would feel like they had done well for example, when they came second in a class of three. The fact they could be 7secs behind the 1st place person was irrellevent. 

The problem was that it didn't reward the fastest driver overall ! 

An alternative system similar to what BARRY suggests was looked at where you could score points on your class place on the day but score a bonus point for breaking the class record.

That was OK in theory but didn't get round the one person in class scenario who could score points for first place against no opposition and the tyre 1b 1c tyre situation didn't help either which threw up too many complications to make if work. 

I do think that the MSA and the initial costs are the biggest barrier to novices that the scoring system itself.

The novice championship still remains and novices will still be rightly rewarded.

Other clubs are having the same problem attracting new blood where the scoring system isn't an issue. 

 

[John Loudon - Sponsorship Liaison]

The HSA championship scoring is based upon awarding additional points for being within so many % of the class record. Perhaps this could be adopted in some way for novices? I know that in reality that is what you are doing with the draft regs above but if I were a novice it would somehow appear more attractive worded this way

The HSA schema is below but could be re-jigged towards 1 extra point maximum and parts of instead of 10 -down to1

10 points       within 1.25% of existing record

8 points         within 2.5%of existing record

7 points         within 3.75% of existing record

6 points         within 5% of existing record

5 points         within 7.5% of existing record

4 points         within 10% of existing record

3 points         within 12.5% of existing record

2 points         within 15% of existing record

1 point          for setting a time

 

 

[John Loudon - Sponsorship Liaison]

I personally think that the biggest hindrance to novices is the spec of the cars that the factory are turning out. ie They seem to sell more cars with simple hoop roll over bars which don't comply just so they can fit weather gear. If they came up with weather gear that fitted over MSA compliant ROPS, it would make things easier for new owners to make the leap. Perhaps have a word with someone at the factory?

[Paul Morcom]

9 hours ago, woodman said:

Yes Barry.

But you dont really need a bonus

By lowering - I meant to say 'Soften'

This would be done to All classes at All venues by the same ammount - say 20%

Terry it will still mean the fastest driver will win because they will beat the TT by the biggest margin.

It is only a PR exercise really

I get where Stu and Barry are coming from.....but IMHO by softening the targets to enable more people to better them will simply take away any personal achievement in doing so. It will therefore become a "so what" event and fail to provide the benefit (PR) originally intended.

In 2018 the novices that wants to chase the old 100+ points (by bettering the novice target when they existed) all they have to do is to realign their "personal achievement threshold" with the one set of targets to 98.5 points. By scoring 98.5+ points they have achieved exactly the same result as in 2017. If a novice scores 100+ then they know they are now competing at the level of an expert and have possibly just set a new WSCC record. How good is that!

We would be far better focusing our time and effort in finding ways to counter the barriers to our sport that are constantly being introduced by the MSA to attract more newbies and retain the current competitors.

[Paul Morcom]

19 minutes ago, John said:

I personally think that the biggest hindrance to novices is the spec of the cars that the factory are turning out. ie They seem to sell more cars with simple hoop roll over bars which don't comply just so they can fit weather gear. If they came up with weather gear that fitted over MSA compliant ROPS, it would make things easier for new owners to make the leap. Perhaps have a word with someone at the factory?

And a whole lot safer for the driver and passenger too.

[Onliest Smeg David]

Agree @JohnDeveloping a full hood for MSA was something I looked at. A one off was £1200-£1500. So a factory development would be fairly small fry in the overall scheme if things.

As others have said TTs is a vert small factor for Novice uptake. But after a few events when you see no Novices get anywhere near them even when in sprint specific cars is an issue for motivation.

As @Paul MorcomEasily achieving TTs would also be unmotivating. Everybody  needs something to aim for, & ACTUAL Records (with who and when clearly identified against each) cannot be dismissed. Whereas anything calculated can easily be seen as unfair. 

Attracting Novices is difficult, but apportioning blame doesn't move things forward. Whereas looking at what we can do within the Regs, Promotion, Support etc to get many more regular members to dip a toe hopefully will. Not doing anything could = A bleak long term future for WSCC sprinting.

Once Novice numbers are building/thriving again, it will be important imo to have their own Actual Records to aim at as TTs. Leading to this there must be some actuals that could be built on already.

[Paul Morcom]

2 hours ago, Dave (OnliestSmeg) - Manchester AO said:

As @Paul MorcomEasily achieving TTs would also be unmotivating. Everybody  needs something to aim for, & ACTUAL Records (with who and when clearly identified against each) cannot be dismissed. Whereas anything calculated can easily be seen as unfair. 

Attracting Novices is difficult, but apportioning blame doesn't move things forward. Whereas looking at what we can do within the Regs, Promotion, Support etc to get many more regular members to dip a toe hopefully will. Not doing anything could = A bleak long term future for WSCC sprinting.

Once Novice numbers are building/thriving again, it will be important imo to have their own Actual Records to aim at as TTs. Leading to this there must be some actuals that could be built on already.

Exactly what I was saying, easy target are just as non-motivating as hard targets but as I said novices just need to adjust the personal goal to 98.5 rather than 100 points. If people want the actual times to challenge themselves against then I have proposed elsewhere a SS course records webpage specifically for novice and expert class records - giving course, name, time, date. This would give people the time to gauge their personal improvement/performance against.

It is already widely acknowledged that the WSCC SS Regs offer Novices substantially more than other championships. There is always more that can be done and that's why SSOT spend significant time each year reviewing the outcomes of the previous year and looking for improvements.

I agree with you, and have clearly stated in previous posts, that it is a combination of many things for an individual to consider when starting or continuing to compete. Significant amounts of analysis and SS marketing were undertaken last year and its effectiveness is always being monitored and efforts refocused as appropriate.

[Matthew Haynes]

According to the MSA 2017 Company Report it showed in 2008 there were 155,729 entrants in all forms of motor sport. In 2016 that number was 133,956. A fall of 21,773 entries (14%).

I the light of this I think much caution is needed before making any radical changes to TTs, and their application.

That being said the 2% difference between classes A&C, and B&D is clearly wrong, and should be altered to 4% (See my previous post)

[Scotty72]

As a non-competitor (complete novice) who is new to the westfield scene, I would say that entering such a series in the outset would be more for the fun factor rather than trying to be THE BEST. IMO promoting the SS and educating potential newcomers would get more entrants than messing about with the scoring system. The main decider for me would be cost and secondly the time available to attend enough events to accrue enough points to get some achievement factor.

[Nick Algar - Competition Secretary]

This debate is extremely interesting but can I just caution one aspect. Time keeps ticking on and the Competition Secretary (John) does need to formally submit the regs to the MSA for 2018 in order for there to be a Championship. Please be mindful of that and that whilst there may be some great ideas the time to analysis and implement some of them now may be too late for 2018. Doesn't mean they should not be considered much more fully for 2019 though. 

This is just me as the old Comp Sec, please don;t let it dampen the debate.