Request for Team Race Events: Help Us Make Inclusive, Balanced Races a Reality on Zwift!

Feature Requests
1

Hi Zwift Community!

I’m Andrew, a dedicated Zwifter and ride leader of a growing club of 20-25 riders. We’ve been having a blast hosting team races using the “Keep Together” feature in meetups, but we’ve run into a few challenges that I believe many of you might relate to—and that could be a great opportunity for Zwift to improve team racing.

The Issue We’re Facing:
Right now, we’re manually balancing teams based on FTP and w/kg using spreadsheets and scripts. While this helps create some balance, the “Keep Together” feature doesn’t always deliver on that promise, especially when the fastest rider on each team drags everyone along, causing some races to feel unbalanced despite our best efforts.

As our club grows, this problem is becoming more prominent, and we’re struggling to keep races close, competitive, and, most importantly, inclusive for riders of all abilities.

Here’s What We’d Love to See:
I’d like to propose a Dedicated Team Race Event feature in Zwift that could help address these issues:

  • Auto-balance teams: Distribute riders evenly based on FTP or w/kg, ensuring that teams are competitive from top to bottom.
  • Race customization: Allow event organizers to fine-tune team dynamics, race settings, and even handicaps, making it easier to create races that suit all riders.
  • Refined “Keep Together” logic: Update the “Keep Together” feature so it doesn’t just favor the fastest rider. We’d love to see it reflect the team’s collective strength, rather than individual outliers, making the race feel fairer for everyone.

This change would make team races more engaging and accessible, ensuring riders of all levels can participate in fun, competitive events without feeling left out or overmatched.

A Call for Feedback:
I know we’re not the only ones facing this issue, so I’d love to hear from others in the community: What do you think? Would a team balancing feature like this help your club or race group? Are there other solutions or workarounds that you’ve tried?

If Zwift can’t implement a full-featured solution right away, it would be great to see some new tools or features that can help us balance teams better, such as better options for handicapping or more flexibility in how “Keep Together” works.

Let’s brainstorm and make team racing even more fun and inclusive for everyone!

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

2

This is confusing to me. You said that it’s a race, and you said that you’re using the keep-together feature. I don’t understand how it can be both. Using keep-together means it’s not a race by definition. It’s just a bunch of people doing whatever they want and magically being kept together by the game.

2 Likes
3

I assume they give each team their own event then compare finish times.

kind of a variation on team ttt. if they offered that up to clubs but sorted it so that riders can only draft of riders in their team and then possibly use the keep together mode based on the teams average output.

A bit like a tandem race.

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4

Hey Paul,
The way we set this up is
1- have 3 teams with 5+ riders each.
2- Each team captain creates a meetup for 6:05pm on a set route for the week.
3- Each team has keep together on and the goal is to finish the route first

Hope this helps clear it up. What we are finding is that even though we balance the teams, it really just goes by the fastest guy in each team and not because we balanced the team by w/kg

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5

Rather than a banded ride would you not prefer to do it in a team time trial format?

Edit: or is the issue a massive difference in ability in the group?

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6

There is a big difference in abilities within the group. The keep together keeps people who would get dropped in a non keep together ride, still feel apart of the group and enjoy it much more.

We dont just want to start a ride and have it split up by abilities within the first 5 miles of a ride.

It also helps the motivation of others to complete the “race” at the same time. Many people would stop joining if they new they would be left real quick and have to finish the ride alone as others are talking on discord while they are done.

7

It’s a Team 1 vs. Team 2 race where each team stays together. To ensure a competitive match, it’s important to balance the teams by including a mix of strong and less experienced riders. To achieve this, Zwift should calculate an average power output or pace for each team. Currently, in a “group keep-together” format, a single rider can dominate and set the group’s overall pace, which can create imbalances.

2 Likes
8

Effectively this is just like a single rider vs another single rider, Zwift uses metrics to determine who is faster. The ask is to simply extend that functionality to a group versus a single rider. Groups of course will never be exactly apples to apples as one group will have an advantage so the feature should slightly handicap the stronger group. It would be awfully nice for organizers to be able to tweak that handicap algorithm as needed. The handicap feature would also allow unbalanced groups where you may have five riders versus four.

4 Likes
9

I would love to see this type of feature. Things are never perfect when you have actual people riding but anything that Zwift could come up with to help those who use this format would help. It’s an awesome way to have riders with different abilities to compete in the group. It’s especially nice for those who are in large clubs with riders who are at different levels.

Competing as teams always increases the motivation of all involved. Riding unbanded and having your pals simply ride away from you is always disheartening. Sure it happens on the road but this is a gaming system. It doesn’t have to be this way.

1 Like