ZakStunts

I couldn`t sleep last night, so made some intresting graphs for a future article. First I wanted to do it about general racer statistics, but later it also got a main point beside the generality:: "Why should you join a team?" 

You can join or form a team since my competition is running. First it wasn`t too popular, but later it became, because you`re part of a smaller commonity in a team, and if it`s a good team then members help eachother by sending their replays, giving tips.
At the moment (23.September, 2002) 55 human racers have joined the competition. Let`s see how many of these are/were team members:

Yes, it`s true. 27 out of 55 racers joined a team. Quite a lot isn`t it? So, why is it good to join a team in numbers? The following 7 graphs will teach you.

This graph isn`t exacly about this, but I`ve made it, so I put it here. I counted at every racer that how many races he joined, and the time between his first and last appearance at the competition. If someone didn`t join a plus track that`s not a miss, but if someone joined the plus only, it`s one active month.
As you can see, most of the racers missed no months. But 17 out of these 45 joined for only one month. The other ones played more, with no pause.
8 racers out of 55 missed one or two month in his career. Mainly these racers are regular racers, but had no motivation, or technical problems, maybe they were on vacation and couldn`t join for a while.
And there are only 2 racers who made a comeback. One of them is racing at the moment, and the other re-joined in 2002 january, then disappeared again.

This is much more intresting. I counted as active racer, who at least one race in August/September. Quite a strict rule. 18 drivers fulfilled this criterium, and as you can see, 65% (13 racers) of the active racers are member of a team, 5 not.
The other 35!!!! drivers have abandoned the race, and as you could see in the previous graph, possibly only 1-4 of them will make a comeback. Only 32% of them was a member of a team, this is mainly because racers who join for one race don`t join a team, so conclusion: joining a team has no almost effect on abandoning competing.

This graph shows how many races the racers were taken part in Plus tracks count as separate ones.. Red is team member, yellow is non team-member. So, from those 17 who only joined for one race there are only 2 team members, and in the 18 who joined for two or three races (attention! there can be newbies there too, who joined through the summer) 6 were team members.
And the most intresting: Racers who stayed for more than 4 races are ALL part of a team. So this means, that who takes the competition seriously joins a team in a half year, and that team racers have much more motivation to race for a longer time.

An intresting graph too, the last one. It shows each racer`s best achieved position. Plus tracks count as separate tracks. It`s a bit confusing, because in 2001 you could easily catch a 7th or 8th position, because it was the last one. :) Now it`s hard to make it in the top 10. So 8 racers could feel the smell of victory. 7 of them is now a member of a team. Almost all of them was a team member when he won.
only 4 non-team members could make in ther top 4 (17 alltogether), and 66% of the top 6 achieved racers is a team member.
on the contrary: 19 racers could only achieve a 10th or worse position as his best, only 4 of them was a team member.

So, if you take racing seriously, hurry and find a teammate, or if you`re a newbie, and you`re not sure you want to race, I recommend that too, it gives an enormous motivation boost, which I can`t express with numbers. :)
I hope with the usage of next year`s dual league, which makes achievable goals for beginners too more racers will stay for a longer time, there won`t be 64% who only joined for one, two or three races. I`ll do this statisticsa about a year later, to see the difference.

Long live stunts.
Zak McKracken,
24.09.2003