This is Steve O'Brien.
I got locked out of my forum account because I had to change my email.
I want to start by saying I love this idea, it's a nice compromise for the older racers who feel they're outclassed by the guys on the Expert SBK grid.
The biggest problem however is the time required to administrate something like this.
There is no easy way to assign points in this way, so I would have to manually update each racers points. I would spend more time doing this than I typically spend assigning points for all the other classes combined. I don't think this is viable, and if we go ahead with this change I think I will step down as the exec in charge of timing and scoring.
The second problem is that not everyone enters their date of birth into MSR. It isn't a mandatory field.
If we went ahead with this I would just disqualify anyone who hasn't entered their DOB into MSR. No appeals, no crying and asking me to fix it after the fact. You didn't provide your age, and you registered for a race that is age dependent, you're DQ'd. Suck it up, fix it for next round.
The third problem (and this is minor) is the sudden jump in handicap Eric proposed at age 60. I had a look at the results from 2025, and Eric's proposed handicap system would have had Ian beat Eric by 2 points in this year's championship, so I think I see what you're aiming for. But the jump from 6 to 10 means turning 60 years old suddenly gives you a big advantage.
I would propose a more linear system where the handicap points increases consistently with age. I think (racers age, minus 35) divided by 2 is probably a little closer. I don't want to divide by 2.7128 and end up with really weird fractional point totals. We already deal with half points for small grids, so dividing by two isn't so bad.
Here is an image showing the various options I looked at:
View attachment 3130
Racers highlighted in red did not enter their date of birth so I assumed they were exactly 35 years old and did not receive any handicap points.
