So when me & my buddies ran the MidAtlantic DownHill Racing Association, we came up with a DROP WORST RESULT system. Our Club Members wanted to compete, but with it being regional, everyone pointed out a guy driving to ALL NINE EVENTS would win.
So we dropped your worst result.
It greatly INCREASED registration/participation& we had tons of positive feedback. The only people who complained were those at the last race who lost the points battle because of the drop.
Most of that could be blamed on us not having a software solution that could display a running points system that eliminated a worst outing. So no one knew until we calculated the overall and it was a surprise.
Buddy was salty because I won our own series instead of him because I had a broken wrist one race.
What would the current World Cup look like if using "Drop Worst Result"? Without looking, I'm guessing it clusters everyone tighter! That would make for a more intriguing and closer series in my opinion with swings in points being smaller.
Anyone got the calculator?
It makes sense for local beer league where people have other commitments in life, but not for Pros. Consistency maters.
What might be more interesting is if there was more money at stake for teams to collect points like the F1 Constructors Standings and cash paid out for better standings. Teams are two men, one women, one jr men, one jr women. Can't have a team like Specialized with just three men.
To have it make sense at the WC level there would need to be more races.
However I do like the idea and have thought of it often myself. The reason I like it is that it would encourage athletes to take better care of themselves particularly with head injuries. There is a groundswell towards this but let's face it, if you sit out a round you will be out of the overall.
Our midweek enduro series does this as well and it's great for amateur athletes who have other stuff going in their lives.
It's a concept that's been used in top level professional motor racing on and off for as long as motor racing has been professional, although it's fallen out of favour more recently.
I wouldn't object to it.
Why bother having more races in a world cup series if the worst (or a no show) race can dropped?
Part of the skill of racing is managing bike and body over a series.
When Vali Holl mentioned 15 races next year on WynTV, I immediately thought having a drop race would be a good idea. With the current short schedule, there isn't room for a drop race.
Useful for an amateur league where finances or other life commitments might mean missing a race.
For professional racers where the world cup race circuit is literally their main job, no. Part of the skill of the overall is being fit, healthy and consistent.
Perhaps if the rumours of a 15 round season are true (I'll beleive it when I see it) then there could be a separate "continental overall" champions awarded from points earned in that continent only.
I was thinking they use to do this for some reason but more I though about it I am pretty sure surfing use to do this back in the day.
Pro World Cup doesn't have the budgets you think.
Having a drop race for a team that can't manage the logistics of one race or a racer who gets hit by a pedestrian on a training ride, etc.
WindRock was decimated by storms in the last 2 years
Last week, Thunder Valley MX was ripped by high winds
When you run a massive traveling circus for the World Cup & expand into North America, South America, Australia/NZ, South Africa, Japan...the chances of making every round gets exponentially harder.
When referring to this year, I'd just like to see the math if we pulled out everyone's worst result. It's more geared toward next year.
And no way is it even 12 rounds. I'd be shocked by 10.
And I might allow the F1 team concept once (although improbably because that's massive budget increase for a bike company).
Despise every time you guys toss a F1 (wealthiest elitist "sport" of billionaires) smoke bomb in a WC discussion.
Problem is with the current euro-focus of the schedule, all the teams are effectively euro based. See the trucks and pits they have for all those rounds, compared with what they show up with to NA or Aus races.
Its fairly obvious which round(s) become the drop round if we are talking about just deliberately not showing up to save money.
F1 did have it until 1990; in fact, back in 1988, Alain Prost scored the most points, but Senna won the title on the 'dropped scores' point system.
I'd imagine logistics pre-cell phone/laptop days, that made life a bit simpler. Can imagine logistics at that point were even tougher.
Like you said its great for small series and amateur stuff, all the moto races I do the series has a drop system but its because we all cant make every race. For a world class series it doesn't makes sense. The argument that it could help teams that cant afford to go to every race is not really true because if a guy is in the hunt for even top 10 overall they're on a team that can afford it.
Also im sure there has been plenty times a world cup overall winner has had a crash and scored little to no points race day but almost everyone has at least one race a year where they crash.
To me, part of winning a championship is consistency. It matters that a competitor can be a threat to win and still be there on his bad days. Managing the equipment, health, and fitness over the course of a whole season isn't easy - and shouldn't be.
Having a 15 race series kind of eliminates the need to drop a race as any single poor result (or non-result) is masked by your 14 other opportunities to score points. I race the AMA National Hare and Hound Series in expert and we take a dropped worst round but the pro classes do not have that luxury in a 6 race series where a single DNF could really really effect your season overall. The argument of choosing a race to not show up for at the World Cup for financial reasons does not make sense because I’d assume/hope the series organizers would be booking at least two events in sequence in hard to reach locations like South America or eastern Asia. If you were planning to not show up to one you’re still on the hook for showing up to the next for the same cost. I can understand wanting to drop a single round due to any unfortunate crashes or bike issues but having 15 rounds would allow for such an issue to happen without it really being a season ender.
My take on the dropping a round would be that you still are required to be there for every round to be eligible. It would help make the points tighter, but still require you to be accountable. I agree with the above comments that this is a professional sport, so accountability is important.
I heard maths nerd.......
From my calculations the top 3 positions stay the same but everyone down to 14th shuffles around until the GOAT who stays 15th (I only took the top 15 though so its possible he might have moved.) Ronan Dunne would get stitched up the most, losing 2 places!
Table with the points totals is below, red cells mean they lost places and green means they gained. The data extraction was a bit fiddly so there might be mistakes here but the totals matched the actual ones so it looks OK so far. Obviously riders that missed a round were left out and didn't change their points.
(If anyone knows of a good source for race results, especially with splits, I would be keen to know - I believe they used to have an API you could access but its been closed down. This was just extracted from the results PDF)
Hard to know what I would prefer? These are also taking overall points from the weekend, so would be interesting to break it down over quali/semis/finals and if the best racers perform well in all 3 timed events or just save it for race day? You could chop the numbers up in all kinds of different ways - it only really matters if the racers know beforehand. When there are points up for grabs from all 3 runs I imagine it changes how they approach the weekend vs only points for the final.
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