Rules

[Mark Faul]

Originally Posted by Mike Schwartz

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.

While I admire your passion for this idea, there's no way in hell NHRA would do this. Here's a breakdown of their savings in purse if they have 65 cars vs your scenario of 63 byes round 1:

Semi 500x1=500
Rd5 450x3=1350
Rd4 400x7=2800
Rd3 300x15=4500
Total of $9150 saved by NHRA

[Michael Beard]

In addition, the race would take a lot longer to run. 63 bye runs in a race instead of 6. Multiply that track time by 5-10 classes, and you're looking at almost another entire day to run an event.