Duncan Louttit wrote

In response to Chris' braking problem, I think that the penalty should continue to be severe. The object of the exercise is to challenge the students. Up to a certain speed the braking distance is adequate, beyond this ingenuity comes into play (see Verminator's "handbrake turn" for an example).

It is not very difficult to add an extra wheel and count its revolutions to determine the correct braking position so I would leave this part of the rules unchanged. Clever teams should always have the best chance of winning!

Nick Smith wrote

The Rat Race penalty is interesting. A large fixed penalty effectively disqualifies a rat that hits the end wall. A penalty based on the time the rat takes is not appropriate as it suggests it is better not to brake at all if you are going to hit the end wall anyway. You really want a penalty that reduces as the run time goes up. A better idea might be to apply a 30%+ discount to the times of mice that do manage to stop in time.

Alan Dibley wrote

The non-stopping penalty rule for the rat-race is a difficult one. A rifle bullet with wheels would win under a "+30 percent" rule, for instance.

An alternative is:-

The mouse that runs the course in the shortest time without hitting the crash stop will be declared the winner. All mice that complete the course but hit the crash-stop will have the winner's time added to their run-time.Positions of second, third.... will be calculated from these adjusted times.

Thus a mouse which completes the course VERY quickly but fails to stop might beat a mouse that completes the course VERY slowly but stops successfully. However, it will not win unless ALL mice hit the crash-stop, but it might come second or third.

Duncan Louttit wrote

One problem with Alan's rule proposal is that the rat race competition is an elimination event rather than a time trial. You can run the fastest time in an early round, have a problem in the next round, and finish nowhere.

Jerry Niman wrote

I think the 5 second penalty has the merit of simplicity. We really don't want to encourage the wheeled bullet entries, to win a mouse really should have to brake successfully. The faster the race, the more severe a fixed penalty is, but is this really a problem ?