Zwift Racing Score - Next Phase! [September 2024]

Racing
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Hey Zwifters!

We’re excited to announce the next phase of Zwift Racing Score! After extensive testing in Zwift Labs and incorporating community feedback, we are ready to roll ZRS out of Zwift Labs into the wild, starting with our Zwift World Series Events.

What Does This Mean for You?

The Zwift Racing Score (ZRS) replaces our A-D power-based categories with a 1-1000 scale, providing a more accurate reflection of your racing capabilities based on real race performances and power outputs. This means you’ll experience:

  • Competitive Categories: Zwift Racing Score helps you select events that suit your competitive level, ensuring you race against similarly skilled rivals. This is all about making your racing experience more engaging and fun!

  • Dynamic Scoring: Your Racing Score will update based on your race results, meaning it reflects your current fitness and performance. Whether you crush it at an event or face tough competition, your score evolves with every race.

  • Real-Time Updates: You can track your Zwift Racing Score easily via your Zwift.com profile, Zwift Companion app, and ZwiftPower.com

What’s happening next and when?

Racing Score Reset: If you’ve been taking part in Zwift Labs Racing Score events, on September 25 at 5pm PT we’ll be resetting everyone’s racing score. Your new racing score will be calculated based on your maximum power outputs for 30 seconds (CP30) and 10 minutes (CP600) from the past 90 days. These data points were selected after analyzing hundreds of thousands of combinations to ensure the most accurate and reliable base score calculation possible.

This extensive analysis allowed us to fine-tune the scoring model, ensuring it reflects a racer’s true performance across various metrics and conditions. It’s important to note that CP30 and CP600 are not equally weighted in the scoring process; the longer effort (CP600) has a greater influence on the final score. These values are normalized by weight and adjusted for fairness across performance levels, resulting in a seed score between 1 and 1000.

As you race, your score will change: finishing higher against stronger competitors will significantly boost your score – we even have podium bonuses for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, while lower placements or less strategic racing may result in smaller gains or reductions. This approach ensures your racing score accurately reflects your performance and growth over time.

Zwift Racing Score (ZRS) Ranked Events: ZRS will start to roll out into racing content shortly and by October 7, 2024, all Zwift-run and community-generated events will be ZRS categorised by default.

The first time each Zwift-run racing Series will use ZRS will be;

  • Zwift World Series - Round 2 (26th Sept)
  • ZRacing Monthly - Community Racing Festival (7th October)
  • Zwift Racing - Clubs (7th October)
  • Zwift Academy - Makeup Races (Oct 28 to Nov 4)

N.B Zwift Racing League (ZRL), will continue with existing power-based categories, including the remainder of Round 1.

We will shortly be in touch with community racing organizers with additional details regarding the process we are undertaking to switch over all community racing events to ZRS enabled effective 7th October.

We’re not stopping here! We’re committed to make ZRS even better over time. As we mentioned in our previous post, some of the next racing score features we’re investigating are:

  • Enhancing the seed algorithm to incorporate a broader range of historical data, considering the performance of racers who are transitioning back indoors after an outdoor riding season.
  • Measures to prevent intentional score manipulation.
  • Category enforcement applied when joining an event instead of at sign up.
  • A historical view of how your score has changed over time.

To learn more, you can visit our Zwift Racing Score FAQ here.

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One thing that was brought up in the other ZRS post was the possibility that a lot of this analysis was based on races where participants were already categorized based on zMAP and zFTP. Meaning it’s then clear why 30s and 10min measurements would stand out as a great way to figure out who would win or not in those groups.

How did the analysis account for this initial categorization for most races ahead of getting the seed value set for the ZRS events?

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But can we as organizers still use zMAP and zFTP for CE if we choose?
@James_Zwift @Nick_ZHQ

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Yes! Absolutely.

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It didn’t.

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Only on private events. All public events will use racing score.

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7

No comment needed…i will need a week to recover from this shock now.

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8

Are you saying you are forcing all organisers to use zrs and removing the ability to use CE, zMap, zFTP?

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Yes, correct.

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any chance the minus 15% seeding issues will be fixed before rollout?
and the instant decay?

EDIT and the tiny race problem. I’ve not been keeping up to speed but i assume that is still a known issue.

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This event is tommorow there could be many entries in the wrong PEN with ZRS Reset today…how will you deal with that?

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@James_Zwift can you encourage more mass-start events? It would do a great job of sussing out the efficacy of ZRS.

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It isn’t something I plan on offering for our Zwift owned content outside of the Climb portal races but other organisers are welcome to do so - they are a bit marmitey though.

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Is that anything like Vegemite?

When is the seed equation going to be published? When this effort launched it was announced that the policy was security through obscurity during development but that all the mechanics would be public once ZRS launched

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Umm, what are you doing with points races?

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I was expecting a Racing Score reset for those that took part in trail events since July, but I was presuming that results from trail events would be re-processed using the new rules like the podium bonuses and the “guinea pigs” would have a more genuine Racing Score.

Disappointing that the power data history being used for racer seed scores is not being extended back to last winter season, far greater than 90 days. Races in the lower pens, especially the lowest, are going to be blown up by different returning strong racers for the coming weeks at the very least.

Rather shocked to hear that community events using the old Category Enforcement system will be private only from around 7th October.
This suggests that we might not be able to see someone blowing up pens lower than their true ability and be able to see they were Category Enforcement pen A/B/C in the old system.

As written earlier, if 30secs and 10mins were chosen to create our seed scores from looking at data from Category Enforcement races, of course sprinting ability is going to be a major decider of race success as well as 10mins… Going as close to the latter as possible without getting a zFTP pen upgrade (so ~3.0W/Kg for CE pen D).

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Hey @Gordon_Rhino-Racing

We haven’t seen any issues with how we discount initial scores. Apologies if I may have missed that thread.

We’ve also significantly reduced the instant decay rate, so it shouldn’t be noticeable. But we are still planning to implement a fix that includes an initial delay of several weeks before scores start to decay. Keep an eye out for that.

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Is it the case that everyone’s starting score is seed minus 15%?

can you also clarify “the longer effort (CP600) has a greater influence on the final score” is this a change coming with the reset of same as before?

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We do apply a discount to initial scores.

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I’m no mathematician but if you apply it all, what benefit is there apart from appearance?

Surely people should start at their base/seed score and only poor performance should move them towards the -15% marker?

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