Mathematics and Being Odd

   Oddly enough; I enjoy math.  If you saw my high school and college transcripts you'd find that hard to believe - I find it hard to believe, but I do like it.  Numbers fascinate me; I love analyzing them and reanalyzing them, resorting them...but I guess that isn't really math - it's just sorting.   Anyway, that's what I was doing yesterday afternoon and this evening.  What type of numbers?  Racing numbers; points tallies to be specific.

   Right now, the three top fuel funny car teams running for the NHRA Heritage Series championship, are all within 25 points of each other.  This equates to one round and less than five qualifying positions between the three cars.  What's even more bitchen is we are one of the three contenders.  Since we can't race until next month - I have to be content with sorting and analyzing numbers.  It wouldn't be any fun if the powers that be up in Glendora made calculating the points easy.  SO, it looks like this:

   You earn points in a couple of different ways.  The first way is by showing up at the meet, car in tow with someone willing to mash the fun pedal in a firesuit.  The points are awarded to drivers, not to the car, team or owner; although any combination of these are fine as long as the same guy (or gal) plants their fanny in the seat for points races.  So you show up, fill out a tech card and try like hell to qualify.  For your efforts; good or bad, NHRA awards you 10 points.  You receive these even if you don't qualify for the show.  It's almost like "everyone gets a trophy", but comes into play later on down the road.  The next way you earn points is through qualifying.  Points are awarded for how you qualify in the field; keep in mind that for the Heritage series, there are two types of fields run.  There is a 16- car field and an 8- car field...this is where it can get confusing.

   A 16-car field awards qualifying points like this:

Qualifying Position                    Points
1st                                            8
2nd                                           7
3rd                                           6
4th                                            5
5th & 6th                                  4
7th & 8th                                  3
9th through 12th                        2
13th through 16th                      1

Seems logical, right?  Well it is until you look at the way an 8-car field awards Q points:

Qualifying Position                    Points
1st                                           8
2nd                                          7
3rd                                          6
4th                                           5
5th                                           4
6th                                           3
7th                                           2
8th                                           1

Try keeping this all straight in your head.  Then the last and most heavily weighted portion of the points are awarded based on --winning!  More rounds - more points; exactly as it should be.  Once again, the size of the class field determines points.  See how it breaks down:

16-car field
Winner                     100 points
Runner Up                 80 points
Semi-Finals                60 points
Round 2                     40 points
Round 1                     20 points

8-car field
Winner                     100 points
Runner Up                 80 points
Round 2                     60 points
Round 1                     40 points

So, the calculation of your event points goes something like this:

Showed up, filled out tech card, made at least one Q run = 10 points
Ran a good enough (or awesome lap) qualified second in an eight-car field = 7 points
Car was like jellied lightning; you couldn't be beat on the tree, runnered - up = 80 points
Take the total of those 3 areas and voila, you have your meet total = 97 points

If you have enough money and/or luck to make each of the six meets, you'll be throwing one of those races out in calculating your final points because you can only count five.  For us it went something like this:

Bakersfield MM - 33 points
Boise 1 - 90-something points (too lazy to get up and look it up in my book)
Mission - 80-something points (see above excuse)
Boise 2 - 90-something points (yep...again)
SLC - 70-something points (duh)

The max points we'll be giving up going into the last race this year will be 33.  The other two teams in the top three didn't even qualify at one of the five races we have listed above.  Their points loss is far less; only 10 points each.  They have similar points as us because they each won at least one of the meets.

Having said all of that - here's how it looks going into the CHRR next month:

Team one - 378 points             After throwing out 33 points = 345
Team two - 378 points            After throwing out 10 points = 368
Team three - 364 points          After throwing out 10 points = 344

With each round being worth 20 points and the total point separation only 24 points between the three teams; every qualifying position and each round is beyondcritical.com