Alright, I told you I'd get to this but it really requires its own section. If you have raced in some type of racing or watch racing, you already know more than me and will probably be able to tell when I get to the point that I don't know what the heck I am talking about.
A race will either start with a HEAT or QUALIFYING, not both. I say this because in Novice training they did both one day and confused the snot out of us for a good couple races.
The whole point of HEATS and QUALIFYING are to determine the racers positions during the MAIN races (more on MAINS later - but these are the overall - what you want to win).
The same beginning day procedures start both formats i.e. safety/sign-in/draw numbers/practice.
HEATS: The tower places racers in groups (or heats) based on their numbers drawn. Then they post the order on the tower board. The posting is broken up by class (jr novice, sr novice, etc) and then by car position (1-8). Oh, did I tell you they go out with 8 racers??
So the cars line up on the track to begin the race in their number position. If they do it right, it looks like this on the track:
Car #
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
Car #1 is also referred to as the "pole" and sets pace. They must be lined up like this before they will throw a green flag to race (if you are watching the jr novices and cant figure out why they haven't started racing, it's usually because of this)q.
Heats still confuse me, but basically the more you win the HEATS - the better position you'll be for the MAINS.
QUALIFYING: So after getting your order at the tower, each kid goes out for 8 laps all by themselves. They have to run as fast as they can for all 8 laps. This is somewhat of a hard concept for the littler guys to get right away. The tower takes the best time.
During qualifying you hear a lot of that little "charge" song like you do at the baseball games. At first I thought it was just a thing and started to get annoyed with it going off all the time. Even the kids were like "Why do they keep playing that obnoxious thing?!"
Later we found out that qualifying is the only time you can set track records and they play that when someone breaks a track record. Track record breaking is kind of fun because it's another aspect of competition, plus the kiddos name goes up on a board on the tower and stays til it's broken again.
So let's say you are one of the top 4 fastest times in qualifying, that automatically earns you a spot in the A MAIN. That's the highest race and you get to kick back and wait awhile til you race again i.e. go get some snacks/use the restroom/get refreshed while the parents adjust little stuff on your car.
So if you were the next 4 fastest cars, you are in the B MAIN. And the next fastest in the C MAIN, and so on until you run out of racers. The number of MAINS depend on the number of racers.
So, Zachary ran qualifying format last time. This is what happened:
He went out and ran his 8 laps. He placed 6 out of 14 jr novice racers. The first 4 fastest cars went to A MAIN. Zachary was in the next 4 fastest cars so he went in B MAIN. The remaining racer went to C MAIN (You can run with less than 8 cars if you are doing the math here).
Kira also ran qualifying last time and this is what happened:
She went out and ran her 8 laps. She came in 3rd out of 4 racers. All 4 senior novice racers went to A MAIN i.e. that's how many kids there are in that class so they all go to A MAIN - good for trophies, bad for drive time.
Now if you followed all that, I will talk about MAINS next. If you didn't follow it, re-read or ask someone who gets it more than me! =)
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