PCA GGR Point System, Time to start figuring out how to fine tune it Options

[nine14cats]

A few of us run PCA events in the Golden Gate Region and Zone 7. This year GGR instituted a points system that took the place of the decade old system that had cars classed by type (mostly). This system needed updating and the points system addressed some of the updates, most notably incorporating the newer water cooled cars.

Unfortunately, the system needs tweeking to make it equitable. A glaring example would be Grant's current car in the same class as Andrew Blyhoder's ride. Both are in AX3. Or in Time Trials where TT8 has some cars that in technology and power to weight are very uncompetitive car to car.

I'm getting ready to respond to the Zone Rep in a PCA forum and encourage anyone wanting to join in the debate to do so. Go to www.pca-ggr.org and click on "online community". Just register and join in.

Here are some datapoints from my looking at it. I compared 2005 (the last season run under the old rules) and 2006 (the current season with the new points system).

I'll compare AX participants:

2005 = 227 different participants
2006 = 195 different participants

Number of classes where a minimum of (1) participant competed at least once:

2005 = 69
2006 = 23

Based on the above number the points system really was succesfull in cutting out the number of classes.

Now let's look at the number of classes that had enough particpants to qualify for the competition standings/year end awards.

Number of classes where particpants qualified for awards:

2005 = 26
2006 = 18

You could make the argument that people wanted someone to compete with, so they tried fitting into some classes under the old system.

Total number of drivers qualifying for awards:

2005 = 50
2006 = 53

Average number of drivers qualified for awards in each class:

2005 = 1.7
2006 = 2.5

This is a very interesting statistic. On the surface you would think that under the new points system that the average number of drivers qualified for awards would be substantially higher with the reduction in classes. I then decided to take out the biggest class in terms of number of qualified participants from each year (N class in 2005 and AX10 class in 2006), in case the number of drivers in these classes were skewing the data. Here's what I got for average qualified award participants:

2005 = 2
2006 = 3.1

Statistically, the percentage growth per number of qualified award participants was substantial, >30%. But in whole number terms....all this debate and we average 1 extra qualified driver per AX class? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/WTF.gif) One nice benefit we did see with the new rules is the reduction of single driver classes from 15 to 3. But the data says we moved that single driver into a class that had 2 drivers and made it 3.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/av-943.gif)

It's my opinion that we need to make a few more adjustments with the new system.

Here's a few charts of what it looks like. The red bars show total particpants per class (even if just 1 time the entire season) and the blue shows the participants qualified for year end competition awards (in this case a minimum of 5 out of the 9 events).

Bill P.