How do you design your Calendar?

[Rollo75]

I'm currently playing with dates for 20X4 and am trying to work out a 20 race season.
I know that:
Daytona needs to be Race 1
Daytona Beach needs to be Race 20
Le Mans and Bathurst need to be races 16 & 17

Beyond that, I'm throwing lots of ideas at the wall and not much seems to stick.

Does anyone else have a process for designing their calendar? If so, what?
Or am I just daft and so far down the rabbit hole that not even the cupcake which has the "Eat Me" tag will help any more?

 

[mjarviejr]

I usually base mine off of date markers. So using your example, I first of all look at Memorial Day for the Indy 500 or Coke 600, Daytona or whatever race on the 4th of July and Darlington on Labor Day weekend. I usually fill in other races such as Sonoma the last weekend in June and Michigan, Watkins Glen, and Bristol in August. Phoenix and Martinsville will be in October and Daytona the 1st race. I then fill in the rest where I think they should be.

 

[casssp]

Very interesting! I do my season calendar in alphabetical order, ascending or descending. It sounds crazy, but believe me: it's cool!

I've always wondered how many others do this too...

 

[mtblillie]

This probably doesn't help with what you are working on, but I have a fictional international series that I run, and I often set the dates to coincide with other big races from different series throughout the year so that they race on the same track on the same weekend. So for example they would be at Daytona RC for the 24 hours of Daytona, and then Daytona oval for the Daytona 500, then later they might be at Spa during the F1 race there, or Bathurst during the SuperCars race, etc.

 

[mjarviejr]

This probably doesn't help with what you are working on, but I have a fictional international series that I run, and I often set the dates to coincide with other big races from different series throughout the year so that they race on the same track on the same weekend. So for example they would be at Daytona RC for the 24 hours of Daytona, and then Daytona oval for the Daytona 500, then later they might be at Spa during the F1 race there, or Bathurst during the SuperCars race, etc.

I've actually got an excel spreadsheet similar to this because I'm trying to incorporate Indy cars and GTP/Trans Am into my offline career mode. I'm just trying to figure out how doable it is for me to actually do it and create all the cars for it. lol

 

[Mystical]

For my lower divisions I randomize the schedules. I use Tabletop Simulator as the randomizer: https://www.adrd-forums.net/index/threads/offline-series-general-chat.294/post-1748

A simple spreadsheet could suffice for randomization but since I need the card art anyways for the presented season schedule images might as well have the most fun with them as cards to randomize my schedules as well.

 

[mrsir1995]

For my offline league, I have six so-called "Crown Jewel " events on my 40-race schedule (Daytona 500, Indy 500, Coke 600, Southern 500, and two fictional ones I've carried through all my leagues since I started doing them 12 years ago). Right now, I have them evenly spaced out throughout the schedule, with each one having six races in between them. I generally try to keep each block of races geographically close to each other (for instance, the six races in between Daytona and Indy are Homestead, Rockingham, Martinsville, Sebring, North Wilkesboro, and Richmond) and the first half of the season tends to stay around the East Coast, then shifts westward in the latter half. I do have two international races on there right now, Mosport and Motegi. A more unusual aspect of my schedule is that there are no repeat visits to any one track, each has one race and then it's done for the year. I also try not to bunch track of the same type together if I can help it (i.e., I try to keep the road courses or superspeedways spread out).

 

[CAkin24]

One of the series in our online league runs a 10 race schedule consisting of a wide variety of tracks that aren't raced currently by the top 3 NASCAR series, and that includes fictionals as well. Usually it's about 3 - 4 short tracks, 2 - 3 speedways / intermediates, a superspeedway, a road course and a dirt track. I try to schedule them so that it's never two of the same track types back to back.

Our Season 3 schedule:

1. Iowa (st)
2. Pensacola (ss)
3. Rockingham UK (sw)
4. Elko (st)
5. Kentucky (int)
6. Cedarburg (dirt st)
7. Memphis (st)
8. Hillside (sw)
9. Lime Rock Park (rc)
10. Ace (st)

Season 4 schedule:

1. Hickory (st)
2. Armory Digital (ss)
3. SimTel Park (sw)
4. Winchester (st)
5. Batangas (rc)
6. SMO (int)
7. New London (st)
8. Winston (dirt st)
9. Walt Disney (sw)
10. Mesa Marin (st)