Pinewood Derby Spreadsheet

The annual Pinewood Derby race is a favorite activity for most Cub Scouts (and dads too). Each scout builds a race car out of a block of wood. At a den meeting, the cars are raced on a downhill track, often with 3 or 4 lanes.

The challenge for the parents running the race is to make the race fair, exciting, and over before bedtime. A simple elimination tournament may cause early losers to lose interest. Also, it may not be fair if one lane of the track is faster than another.

Keeping Score

At Pack 18 in Everett, Washington we use a scoring method that works well. Technically, it is called chaotic-rotation. Racers are divided up into groups of 6 to 15. In each group, each car races three times, in a different lane each time, no more than once per heat, and against different cars if possible. After every racer has raced in a group, we select the best cars and race them in a final group.

This scoring system was originally paper-based. The paper system worked OK with 20 scouts, but it took too long to score when the pack grew to 45 scouts. Automating the paper system with an Excel spreadsheet solved the problem. Having the spreasheet display visible to the starting gate helpers also made the races run quickly. A laptop computer connected to display projector works well.

Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet is setup for a 3-lane (or 4-lane) track, with the lanes are labeled A, B, and C. Cars are numbered and divided into groups of between 6 and 15 cars. Each race group uses a page of the spreadsheet -- the 6-car group is shown above. Car numbers are entered in the Heat 1 "Car" column. These numbers re-appear in different places in Heat 2 and Heat 3. As races are run, 1, 2, or 3 is enterd in the "Place" column for first, second, and third place. At the end of 3 heats, the "Total Place" column will have a 1 for the 1st place car, 2 for the second place, and so on. The white cells in the spreadsheet are the only cells that accept entries. Driver names are looked up and the score is computed automatically.

If you have a electronic timer, you can enter race times in seconds, rather than place. If you use the newer versions of the spreadsheet, racer names will be listed by the car numbers.

You can download the original 3-lane spreadsheet PINEWOOD.XLS (80k bytes), or the 4-lane version Pine4.XLS . Spreadsheets that include racers names are Pine3n.XLS and Pine4n.XLS. (Thanks to other users for submitting these.) A zip file, PINEWOOD.ZIP (82k bytes) contains all these files (Jan 2004).

If you need 2-lane version for a Raingutter Regatta race, download Rain2n.xls. This will work for car races too. Thanks to Rick H. for creating this version. For a a 3-lane version that has 4 and 5 car races that only use 2 of the 3 lanes, download Pine3nP180.xls. If you have a 4-lane track and want to run two runs per heat, download Pine4p290.xls which was developed by Pack 290 in Frisco Texas.

If your browser tries to display the file instead of downloading it, right-click it, then pick something like Save Target As.

Tips

Here are some tips for running your Derby. For the initial races, group sizes of 7 or more are better because cars won't race against the same car twice. For this reason, you may want to combine two dens. After the first round of racing, expect many ties. Pick the cars with the best (lowest) scores and create a semi-final group. After the semi-final races, take the top 3 (or 4 if 4-lanes) cars and have a quick final race. To save time on race-day, have your weigh-in the night before the race. To avoid confusion start numbering cars at 10, and use letters it mark the lanes. Most important: Have fun!

Other Pinewood Derby Web Sites

Darin McGrew's Derby Page has a description of race methods.
ScoutDB spreadsheets - Bob Baggerman's Excel scoring spreadsheet. Similar, but with a different display format.

Click on Next Site... image below to tour other derby sites.

Email your feedback to: chris.sutton@gte.net chris.sutton@gte.net.