I have recently been asked why I use throwouts when calculating the series point standings. This made me wonder if more folks were asking  the same question. Here is a brief explanation as to why I think using them better serves the need for relevance in the series rankings.

In the past I have used the first two races without considering a throwout in my totals. Then when totaling the scores to include the third and fourth races I calculate in one of the two throwouts. Then after the fifth race I would use two drops until the end. It was my feeling that this always gave a more accurate representation of the standings. One can think of many scenarios where posting all the races in the weekly standings would skew the actual probabilities.

Here is one;

Let's say Driver A has ran 5 races and scored as follows-  90  92  90  88  94 Using all  the races would give him a points total of  454.

Let's say Driver B had only ran three races and scored-  98  102 and 100. He would have a total of 300 points.

So maybe Driver A is likely ranked in the top 3 because he has 5 races in his points total, but Driver B may be ranked 10th because he is missing two races. On the surface. from just looking at the points totals it would appear that Driver A is way out front of Driver B.

But is he really?

Driver A scores a 92 in the sixth and final race. Driver B shows up and takes the win and TQ for 102 points. So when we calculate the final totals using the two throwouts it looks like this.

Red represents each driver's throwouts.

	Race 1	Race 2	Race 3	Race 4	Race 5	Race 6	TOTAL
Driver A	90	92	90	88	94	92	368
Driver B	98	00	102	100	00	102	402

Driver A would have been ranked considerably higher in the points standings from the second race through the fifth, but in reality as long as Driver B ran four races, Driver A was  never even close.

This is just one scenario of how the point standings could be inaccurate when throwouts are not taken into consideration throughout the series. I am sure you can think of more.

As always, if you have comments or questions, drop me an email, or catch me in the forum.