My concern is around the person being moved from Sportsman to Championship..
5.2.1 Class Types
There are two class types, Championship and Sportsman. While both classes will race separately, they will both score points for the overall points standings and the Championship. Sportsman drivers will be moved up to the Championship class if their lap time is within 3% of the fastest practice time, if their median lap time from their last 6 races is within 3% of the median fastest lap time and/or at the discretion of the Race Series Managing Staff.
Example: Joe is a relatively new driver. He hits his stride after two race weekends. The next two raceweekends are very good. So he is in line for being in top five Sportsman. But he must do not so good in the next race weekend or he will be moved up to Championship and his point total for the 4 race weekends is 71, that is not going to be good at all. Joe's best bet is to sandbag and stay in Sportsman. Aha....we will convert Joe's Sportman points to Championship points (65 for first place, etc). Joe earned his points against Sportsman class and Sam has the same point total earned against Championship class. Sam is not happy.
Hank sees this and next year starts in Sportsman, gets 6 first place in Sportsman and then converts them to Championship point. Sam is really not happy now.
How are we going to resolve the issue? I do not know, but I think it bears a lot discussion. The concept is great. I am not sure how to solve the problem with the [/IMG]
The other question that comes to mind is that we usually have twice as many Sportsman as Championship. What motivates the Sportsman group, is it racing with somebody on an equal skill level or is it winning a race. In a lot of race series where there is an opportunity to cheat, it is winning races. What is the "Sportsman" driver motivation?
Is it possible that there should be a group with no recognition at year end (GroupX), a Sportsman group with the top five finishers, a Championship group with the top five finishers. GroupX would be made of novice, "sometimers", "justfor funers", etc. Drivers elect to run in whichever group they choose. Almost a return to Sportsman, Expert, Chamionship.
Maybe the Expert label is a hinderence.
You could transfer race results from no more than two races from GroupX to Sportsman (points awarded on Sportsman Guidelines) and a person going from Sportsman to Championship can transfer no more than two race results to Championship.