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What do you do with a 65-car field? - Michael Beard
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All bye runs can't be in the first round. What do you do with an odd number of round winners? - Ed Wright
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Well, that's obvious. You give the top 63 qualifiers a bye and the bottom 2 qualifiers have to race. Then you have a nice even 64 cars left for round two. - Toby Lang
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Toby has the solution for Mike's case of 65 cars. My basic idea is to resolve the ladder in a way that there are no bye-runs after the first round. In some fields that means several singles in the first round, while most cars race; in others like 65, there will be, in effect 63 byes in the first round and one actual pairing.
You have to remember that in order to eliminate a 65 car field you are in effect going to need a 128 car ladder with 63 empty slots in it. Current practice is to manipulate the ladder into multiple "full pods" and "empty pods" to compensate for the scheduled odd car byes. If you look at the ladders at NHRA.com, you'll see that many ladders set up this way are 1/4 empty space. My plan takes all the mid-race empty pairings and competition byes and moves them to the first round.
Current format:
65>33>17>09>5>3>2
- - - Six rounds of eliminations to reach final. Seven wins needed for title.
- - - 9.2% (6/65) of starters have shot at title with only six wins needed
Proposed format:
65>64>32>16>8>4>2
- - - Six rounds of eliminations to reach final. Seven wins needed for title.
- - - 96.9% (63/65) of starters have shot at title with only six wins needed.