Not sure if Mike feels the same way, but I feel like I drove faster times this year (on good days) than last, though the index numbers for the good events did not go up.
Our region seems to snub raw time results, which are more useful for the 90+% of car enthusiasts, driving cars that are not dominant in their class, are not prepared to the limit of the class rules, and are not being driven by a national champion driver.
I started looking at percentile, and dividing my time by the fastest raw time at the event. It works pretty well for our region, because we have a half dozen really fast drivers that are always within a small fraction of a second of each other. It's arguably harsher for our region, because we have at least two Evo School instructors, some nationally competitive drivers, and 140+ participants with a larger than average competition base to pull fast wild cards from. And we run on a grit covered, broken surface, blacktop parking lot, which should penalize higher power, grippier tires, and stiffer suspensions, compared to concrete.
The number seems to be reasonably useful. Assuming every other region and event is drawing similar or lower levels of top drivers, divide the percentile against the raw time of another event, and it should tell what the raw time of driver and car at that event should be. If I use a low average percentile, I can be reasonably confident that, barring mechanical problem, I should be able to run that time or better.
Our region seems to snub raw time results, which are more useful for the 90+% of car enthusiasts, driving cars that are not dominant in their class, are not prepared to the limit of the class rules, and are not being driven by a national champion driver.
I started looking at percentile, and dividing my time by the fastest raw time at the event. It works pretty well for our region, because we have a half dozen really fast drivers that are always within a small fraction of a second of each other. It's arguably harsher for our region, because we have at least two Evo School instructors, some nationally competitive drivers, and 140+ participants with a larger than average competition base to pull fast wild cards from. And we run on a grit covered, broken surface, blacktop parking lot, which should penalize higher power, grippier tires, and stiffer suspensions, compared to concrete.
The number seems to be reasonably useful. Assuming every other region and event is drawing similar or lower levels of top drivers, divide the percentile against the raw time of another event, and it should tell what the raw time of driver and car at that event should be. If I use a low average percentile, I can be reasonably confident that, barring mechanical problem, I should be able to run that time or better.