*LEAGUE POLICY UPDATES*
Monthly Seasons
As we first started discussing
here, we will be dividing our Sunday league nights into monthly "seasons". Tonight will be the first of five races in the "July Season". We will no longer be doing Promotion and Relegation each week. Instead, we will be locking all three divisions for the entire month and will only be promoting and relegating drivers at the end of each month. This will prevent drivers from being relegated into a lower division for things that don't have anything to do with skill level. For example, if they have a low score due to them missing races during the course of the night, if they are not able to provide 24-hour advanced notice of missing the races, or if they simply got caught up in wrecks that they had no control over.
Please see kcheeb's post below to see which division you're assigned to for the July season. Be sure to get to know these drivers well because you're be racing with them for the next five weeks! This consistency of drivers should also allow everyone to become more familiar with each other's tendencies on the track, such as driving lines, brake points, drafting habits, etc. It is our belief that this increased familiarity amongst our divisions will even further enhance the clean driving that this league is already known for.
Of course, with drivers being locked into a division for an entire month, it would be impractical to force all new drivers to start in D3 and work their way up. That's why we have developed a
placement system that we will use to assign drivers to the division that most likely allow them experience competitive and close racing in their very first week in the league.
Participation Bonus
Since we're locking drivers in their divisions for the entire month, drivers will no longer be subject to relegation if they don't provide 24-hour advanced notice of missing Sunday night. However, it is will still be expected and very much appreciated if all drivers continue to notify the league if they are not able to attend a particular Sunday night. This makes is much easier for the division directors to do their behind-the-scenes preparation for the night.
That being said, I'm concerned that the lack of a "no-show" penalty will increase the number of times that occurs. Therefore, we will be awarding a "participation bonus" for drivers who are consistent about showing up on Sunday nights. All drivers who race on every official league night within a given month will be allowed to drop their lowest
score for the month. Since July has five weeks, we will only calculate every drivers top four scores for the month when determining the results for the July season. In other words, we will only tally points for each driver for X weeks, where X equals the number of Sundays in a month minus 1.
Simply put, drivers who do not race every Sunday within a given month will not have the ability to drop their lowest score. For example, since July has fives weeks, drivers who race all five Sundays will get to drop their lowest score because we will only be adding up each drivers top four scores. Drivers who only race four weeks will have each of those four weeks scores added because again, the number of weeks we'll be adding up is four. Drivers who compete in three or less weeks during the month will simply be at a huge disadvantage when it comes to the final score for the month simply because they did not participate in enough races to accumulate four weeks of scores.
New Prize Structure
As you all know, we have always awarded our D1 podium finishers with the Prize A, Prize B, and Prize C selections. We have
previously discussed the possibility of awarding those three prizes instead to the winner of each of our three divisions, but it was decided that "promotion" was already a prize for the winners of D2 and D3.
However, now that we will no longer be promoting the D2 and D3 winners every week, there is no longer any prize for them each Sunday night. Therefore, we will now be awarding Prize A, Prize B, and Prize C to the winner of each division. The division winner with the highest score (using our exclusive
PERFECT 100 points system) will get to pick the prize first, followed by the division winner with the second highest score. The division winner with the lowest score of the division winners will get the remaining prize (usually
Prize C).
This new prize stucture will vastly increase the number of drivers who get to pick cars and tracks for our league and that's a good thing! I also feel like this new allocation of prizes underlines what we have said all along, which is that all three of our divisions are equally important and should have an equal voice in our league's direction and path.
PLEASE NOTE: All S.N.A.I.L. policies and procedures are a result of feedback and a lot of hard work by many of our league members. We spend an immeasurable amount of time collaborating, discussing, and developing our ideas. It also takes months of trial and error within S.N.A.I.L. to help us determine what works best for us. Therefore, we do not appreciate when the ideas that we have worked so hard to develop are simply "copy and pasted". If you would like to use any of our ideas for your own league, please have the courtesy to ask.
