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Scoring

The full rules for how a score is worked out and what makes the standings. For help choosing among the four methods, see Scoring & Championships.

What a saved result can't be

Two checks apply to every hand-entered result, whatever the scoring method, and Trusty Track refuses the save rather than storing either:

  • A recorded time can never be negative. 0 stays the valid DNF marker (see below), but a negative number would be first on the heat card and would subtract from a car's score rather than simply being wrong.
  • The same racer can never be entered in two lanes of the same heat.

Both are checked when you click Save Results, not while you're typing — unlike the place checks under Points below, which flag a problem live and disable the button until it's fixed.

Timed

Each car's score is the average of its recorded heat times, and the fastest average wins.

  • Averages make heat counts irrelevant: a car with four heats and a car with five are compared on the same footing.
  • A car that leaves the gate but never reaches the finish — a wheel comes off, it jumps the lane — is given 9.999 seconds for that heat. One bad run hurts the average; it does not erase a morning of good ones. The standings mark it separately, so it is never confused with a car that genuinely finished that slowly.
  • A heat that was skipped is simply not part of anyone's average.

Points

Each car's score is its finishing places added up — 1st is 1 point, 2nd is 2 — and the lowest total wins. Points exist for racing without a timer: somebody at the finish line calls the order, and types it straight into Override/Edit on the Race screen — see Race and Track Settings for setting a track up with no timer at all, which makes that the main way results get recorded rather than a fallback.

Because points are a total, a car with fewer counted heats gets a better score. Every rule below exists to stop a missing heat from becoming a reward:

  • A car that breaks down mid-heat is scored as last in that heat — last among the cars actually in it, not the number of lanes.
  • The cars in a skipped heat are also scored as last in it. A scratch classifies last, the same as in any racing series.
  • A heat where some cars ended up racing fewer times than others — a lane died mid-round, or a racer arrived late — is set aside from the standings entirely.
  • A lane left blank in Override has no place and is not counted — a genuinely unfinished entry, not a result.
  • A typed-in place has to make sense: 1st or better, no higher than the number of cars in the heat, and not reused for two cars unless their recorded times genuinely match (#816). Trusty Track refuses the save and says why, rather than storing a number that would score wrong — a 0 or a negative place would otherwise subtract from a car's total.

Cumulative time

Each car's score is its recorded heat times added together, rather than averaged, and the lowest total wins. While every car races the same number of heats, this orders racers identically to Timed — it is a real third method only because that condition can break: a lane going out of service, a late arrival, or a track reconfigured to fewer lanes can all leave some cars with a heat count the rest of the field does not share.

Because it is a total rather than an average, a car with one fewer heat has one fewer time to add up — which sums to less, the same reward for a missing heat that Points guards against. Cumulative time follows both of Points's own protections for that reason:

  • A car that never reaches the finish is given 9.999 seconds for that heat, the same DNF penalty Timed uses — a bad time, not a vanished one, and marked separately on the standings for the same reason.
  • A round where some cars ended up racing fewer times than others is set aside from the standings entirely, the same as under Points.

Marking a DNF on the standings

Under Timed and Cumulative time, a DNF is folded into the score as 9.999 seconds — a real number the scoring math can add up, not a sentinel. That number alone cannot say whether a car genuinely finished at 9.999 seconds or slower (a long track, a slow rocket, a Raingutter Regatta boat) or never finished at all, so the standings say so directly: a car with one or more DNFs among its counted heats shows (1 DNF) or (2 DNFs) beside its score, wherever the standings are shown — the operator's own Standings page, the audience Standings tab, and the projector view.

Points does not show this note. A DNF there is already scored as last place in its heat, the same as a skipped one — the score already carries the full penalty, so there is nothing left for a note to add.

Fastest single run

Each car's score is its single best recorded time — the traditional pinewood answer, and what most packs mean by "fastest run wins." A car that is quick once and unlucky twice places on the once.

  • A car that never reaches the finish is not a candidate at all for that heat: the DNF is ignored outright, not penalised. A bad run never drags a car's best time down, because it was never in the running to be the racer's score — so there is no DNF note to show here, the way there is under Timed and Cumulative time: the score a DNF could have produced was never counted in the first place.
  • A car whose every run is a DNF has no time to offer, and sorts below every car that finished at least one heat — worse than being left out of an average, the way a DNF is under Timed.
  • Like Timed, it does not care how many heats each car ran: a round disrupted by a lane outage or a late arrival still counts toward the standings.

Drop the worst run

An optional setting next to Scoring on the race form, off by default (0). It is not a fifth method — it is a modifier over whichever of the four you picked: each racer's worst counted results are set aside before scoring, the same number for every racer.

  • It only fires when everyone who has raced has the same number of counted results, and that number is at least one more than what is being dropped. Dropping one run from a racer with three heats and one from a racer with four still leaves them uneven — two against three — which is exactly the missing-heat reward every rule above exists to prevent. So when the field is uneven, nothing is dropped at all, and the standings say so rather than pretending the setting is off.
  • It is the honest version of the DNF penalty. Under Timed and Cumulative time, a DNF is still recorded as 9.999 seconds; under Points, it is still last place — those inventions have not gone away, because a bad run is still a fact the scoring math has to hold a number for. What changes is what happens next: an invented penalty is usually the highest value a racer has, so it is usually the one that gets dropped. A racer whose one bad heat was a DNF ends up scored entirely on the heats they actually finished, as if the bad one had never been scheduled — no 9.999 seconds, no invented last place, because it was never counted in the first place. The DNF note above follows the same rule: a dropped DNF no longer shows in it either, since it is no longer one of the heats the score is drawn from.
  • A racer with more than one DNF still has the extras count. Dropping the worst run removes exactly as many results as the setting says, however many of a racer's results were bad ones.
  • Under Fastest single run, dropping the worst run changes nothing: that method already keeps only a racer's single lowest time, and removing the highest of the rest can never be the value it was already using.

When two cars tie

Tied cars share the rank — 1st, 1st, 3rd — and every page that shows standings shows it that way. What happens beyond that is up to the race's Tiebreaker setting, next to Scoring on the race form — see Ties in Race and Track Settings — because how a tie should be settled is the pack's call, not one Trusty Track can guess.

The default, Leave it shared, is today's behavior and nothing more: tied cars share the place — two 1sts, then 3rd — and you settle it yourself with a Run-off from the standings, or by correcting a time. Choose one of the other four and Trusty Track settles it for you, wherever a tie actually decides something — the last qualifying slot in a final, or who gets a speed trophy — but each one only helps under some scoring methods, not all of them:

Choice What it looks at Who wins When it can't help
Fastest single heat Each tied car's single fastest heat The lowest of those Under Fastest single run scoring, where that's already what's being compared
Lowest total time Each tied car's heat times, added up The lowest total Under Timed (average), only when every tied car ran the same number of heats — a disrupted round can leave them uneven, and then the totals differ even though the average doesn't. Under Cumulative time, it's the score itself, unless worst runs are being dropped
Countback Finishing places, not times: how many 1st-place heats, then 2nds, and so on The most 1sts, then the most 2nds, and so on Nothing about the race's settings stops it — works with no timer at all
Head-to-head Only the heats where the tied cars raced each other Whoever won more of those If the tied cars never shared a heat — the tie then stays shared

None of the four invents an answer the data does not support. A method the race's own scoring and timer rule out gets a warning right there in the Ties fieldset on the race form, before you even save it. Beyond that, identical times and two cars that never actually raced each other still leave a tie unresolved, exactly as if Leave it shared had been chosen. A row the chosen method did settle says so on the standings — "2nd, on fastest single heat" — so the tie is still visible even once it is decided. Where a tie decides who advances or who wins a trophy and the chosen method could not settle it, the schedule shows a Tie unresolved badge and the Awards page marks the recipient as provisional — the round stays runnable and the trophy stays assignable either way; both are just asking you to make the final call.

Cars that have not raced yet do not tie with each other; they are listed below every car that has, in a stable order.

Settling a tie with a race-off

A Start run-off button appears against a shared rank on the Standings page, and beside a Tie unresolved badge on the schedule. Click it and Trusty Track builds a heat holding exactly the tied cars; arm and record it through the ordinary race-day screen, same as any other heat. Whoever wins the run-off takes the tie — no need to change the Tiebreaker setting, and no need to hand-edit anyone's time.

Once it is recorded, the standings row says so — "1st, on a run-off" — the same note a resolved Tiebreaker method leaves, and the row it is attached to now shows each racer's own run-off time rather than disappearing the moment the tie splits apart. A Re-run button is there too, for a mistyped time: it re-opens the same entry boxes, prefilled with what is already recorded, and saving replaces the result rather than starting over.

If more cars are tied than the track has usable lanes for — a five-way tie on a four-lane track, say, or one lane out of service leaving even fewer — Start run-off is disabled and says why, naming both counts. There's nothing to click here; settle it a different way, for example a corrected time or the race's Tiebreaker setting.

A run-off's own time never joins anybody's average, sum, or any other number the standings compute. It settles one thing only — the shared rank it was created against — and leaves everything else exactly as it was, including a track's own speed records: a blazing-fast run-off lap does not become the fastest car the track has ever seen, because it was never a real qualifying run to begin with.

If a time is corrected afterward and the tie the run-off settled no longer exists — the cars are not tied any more, or a different pair is now tied instead — the run-off simply stops applying. Nothing is deleted; it just has nothing left to decide, the same as if it had never been run. A fresh one covers whatever the standings show now.

Recording a run-off updates any championship round whose line-up was drawn from the standings it just settled, the same as a corrected time does — a final that had not filled in yet fills in with the run-off's winner, and one that had already filled in with the wrong car of the tied pair refills with the right one. See When a time is corrected.

What the overall standings cover

The overall standings — "Overall (qualifying rounds)" in the selector — are built from the qualifying rounds only: the rounds the whole roster races. Left out, each for its own reason:

Left out Why
Championship rounds Their cars were picked from the standings, so feeding their times back in would be circular — a final's result could change who was supposed to be in the final. Each has its own page in the selector.
Elimination rounds A car knocked out early races fewer heats, so there is no fair average or total. The round's own page shows its result in losses.
Rounds set aside under Points or Cumulative time See below.
Free race heats They count for nothing, by design.

Rounds that are set aside

Under Points or Cumulative time, a round where some cars raced fewer heats than others is left out of the overall standings — both are totals, so both are vulnerable to the same missing-heat reward. The round still runs — its heats show on the schedule and are recorded as normal — but it does not get a page of its own in the round selector; the Standings page instead shows a banner naming the round and explaining why it isn't counted.

Three things cause it:

Timed and Fastest single run keep these rounds: an average and a single best time don't care how many heats each car ran.

A withdrawal does not set a round aside — an absent car empties a lane, it does not give anyone extra heats.

Each round's own page

The selector above the standings table lists every championship and elimination round beside the overall standings.

  • A championship round's page shows that round's results, scored the same way as the race.
  • An elimination round's page shows losses instead of times: cars still racing first, then the eliminated, in order of how long they lasted.
  • A Slowest Race page lists the slowest car first, because in that round the last one down the track wins. Only the display is reversed — nothing else reads the standings differently.

Racing without being ranked

Some cars need to go down the track without competing for a trophy — a sibling or parent's car, the den leader's demonstration run, an outlaw-class entry sharing the track between dens. Setting a racer's Racing, not ranked flag on the Roster page does exactly that:

  • The car still races. It is scheduled into heats, shown on the audience displays, and its times are still recorded — nothing about check-in or scheduling changes.
  • It is left out of the standings entirely, on every page — the overall standings, a championship round's own page, an elimination round's order of finish. It cannot advance into a championship round, and it cannot win a speed award.
  • The Standings page counts how many cars are racing but not ranked, so an operator sees a shorter list explained rather than a shorter list that looks like a bug.
  • It still sets track records. A record is a fact about the track, not about who was competing for a trophy that day.

The Grand Finals winner

A related, separate setting on the race form, Exclude Grand Finals winners from qualifying standings: once a championship round has a winner, that car stops counting toward the standings it qualified from — so the pack champion does not also keep their own den's trophy. It only takes effect once the round is decided, and a corrected time can move who is excluded, exactly like every other standings rule on this page. Off by default.

A third setting reaches the same "one child, one trophy" goal a different way: At most one trophy per racer changes which award a racer wins, not who counts toward a standings list — a den trophy rolls down to the next-fastest car once its own winner has already taken a higher award, rather than the champion being dropped out of the den's own standings. See At most one trophy per racer.