A lot of divisions (leagues? I dunno) in A and B are at a glance better-balanced this season — which makes sense in that the closer to the top end you get, the more stable the teams are likely to be. That is, not only do many retain their roster but even those that don’t tend to recruit/attract the correct level of racers. This is how team sports generally work.
For somewhat understandable reasons WTRL have refused to force all new teams (how would you define ‘new’, for one) to start at the bottom. This is probably especially evident in C and lower end of B.
There aren’t a lot of good options. Having to do qualifiers every season doesn’t really work and messes with the sense of progression.
It might be that the best alternative would be a stricter ‘licensing’ system: you break it, you buy it.
- The teams with previous results are allocated by the division promotion/relegation rules and crucially the listings made available early enough. Let’s say 2 weeks before season starts for existing teams to have their core roster up. Teams could be allowed to withdraw and be treated as new teams if fewer than let’s say 40% of the previous roster remains.
- New teams would then have a one-week window to register and get automatically allocated to one of the existing divisions based on their core roster strength, and then have a chance to indicate whether they believe another division would be a better fit.
- Divisions would not be automatically redistributed unless they grow beyond 20 teams (or whatever). Divisions are not redistributed at all after the season starts.
- However, promotion/relegation numbers would be relative to division size (e.g. <12 teams = 2, <16 teams = 3, and so on, but both the division above or below would use their own count so that the total team number stabilizes).
- If any team overperforms, they are immediately before the next race promoted to the next division without carrying over their points (it is the team’s responsibility to ensure they’re in the right place). If they overperform again, they are promoted again. 3. and 4. still apply.
This way while it’s possible that some teams would lose out on one or two races of points, they’d still get to race all events so it’s like a rolling qualifier. On the other hand, other teams would not see their progression messed up quite as badly with constant reshuffling.