The Spokes Team Challenge adds a fun and exciting dimension of competition to the autocross season. The Team Challenge pits 10 teams, made up of 4 drivers of varying skill levels, competing against each other for points through the season. A driver scores points for their team by improving their performance compared to their own previous performances. This means that lesser experienced drivers who have a lot of improvements to make typically score the most points, while the more experienced autocrossers score fewer points but contribute by helping others on their team improve.
Here is a link to the 2023 scoring sheet if you want to see how it works.
2023 Team Challenge Spreadsheet (rankings, teams, scoring): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cAFqP_f-pay8sdTIRvYeLVLRh-76QPQewEfPqMoANFY/edit#gid=1
How to sign up
Sign up by adding your info here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xSHceUzaqYoMypIkSNJWOy00vSf5-U6tpkKbsUC0K9A/edit?usp=sharing
When the team challenge starts/ends
The team challenge runs across 10 autocrosses, beginning with Autocross #3 and going through Autocross #12, with points accumulating over the course of those autocrosses.
How teams are formed
Once we have 40 drivers signed up, we will rank all of the drivers based on their past pax performances. Teams will then be assigned such that each team has an evenly matched ranking of drivers, using the following sequence:
- Team A will have drivers ranked 1, 20, 21, 40
- Team B will have drivers ranked 2, 19, 22, 39
- Team C will have drivers ranked 3, 18, 23, 38
- Team D will have drivers ranked 4, 17, 24, 37
- Team E will have drivers ranked 5, 16, 25, 36
- Team F will have drivers ranked 6, 15, 26, 35
- Team G will have drivers ranked 7, 14, 27, 34
- Team H will have drivers ranked 8, 13, 28, 33
- Team I will have drivers ranked 9, 12, 29, 32
- Team J will have drivers ranked 10, 11, 30, 31
As you can see, the average driver ranking of each team will be 20.5, giving each team an equal chance at competing for the win.
We strongly encourage teams to come up with names for themselves!
How points are scored
Each drivers scores points for their team by improving compared to their own prior performances. We establish a drivers past performance by taking the average pax points from (up to) the best 6 out of their last 12 autocrosses. That sets their ranking for the previous step based on which teams are formed, and is the baseline from which a driver tries to improve.
The scoring system is best explained with the use of an example…
- Let’s imagine the 4 members on the team come in with previous average pax points of driver 1 with 100, driver 2 with 90, driver 3 with 80, and driver 4 with 70.
- At the next autocross, let’s say driver 1 get 98 pax points, driver 2 gets 90, driver 3 gets 84, and driver 4 gets 75. In this scenario…
- Driver 1 scores 98% for the team (98/100)
- Driver 2 scores 100% for the team (90/90)
- Driver 3 scores 105% for the team (84/80)
- Driver 4 scores 107% for the team (75/70)
- The average across all 4 drivers is 102.5% (this is the team score for the event)
- We then rank the teams by their team scores, with the top ranked team scoring 10 points, 2nd place scoring 9 points, and so on, with the 10th team scoring 1 point.
- What happens when one or more team members miss an autocross?
- We will have a list of substitute drivers who can score points on behalf of missing drivers. There is nothing that a team needs to do ahead of time for this; it will be handled automatically as part of the scoring process.
- There will be a limit of one substitute driver per team per event. That is, if 2 members of your team miss an event, you will be allocated only one substitute driver.
- A substitute driver must have an average pax score higher than the driver being replaced.
- Scoring example:
- All 4 team members present… team gets 100% of the average of the 4 drivers.
- 3 team members + 1 substitute… team gets 100% of the average of the 4 drivers.
- 2 team members + 1 substitute… team gets 95% of the average of the 3 drivers.
- 1 team member + 1 substitute… team gets 90% of the average of the 2 drivers.
- 0 team members + 1 substitute… team gets 85% of the score of the substitute.
- A team’s 3 lowest scoring events will be dropped, and their 7 best finishing events will count towards season points.
