As I mentioned in my earlier post, the Raid World Championship requires the teams to rest a minimum of 27 hours over the course of the race. In an effort to allow those of us who are following the action at home, using the web, they've added the official rest time remaining for each team to the leaderboard. If you mouse over the team name, a pop up occurs giving you an up to date reading of how much rest time remains.
This helps to give a little insight into a team's sleep strategy and how they approach the race. For instance, some teams like to bank up rest time early so they are well rested, and have the compulsory time out of the way, for later in the race, when they need to make a dash for the finish line. Other teams, on the other hand, will try to build a big lead, then take some rest time, allowing teams to close the gap. The more experienced, and successful teams, seem to find a great balance of sneaking in some rest when they can, and spreading it out over time, but having it out of the way for later stages. The race rules also require the teams to take their rest periods in a minimum of four hour blocks. Any less than that, and it doesn't count towards the compulsory rest time.
Of some interest in this race, you'll notice a few teams actually have more than 27 hours of compulsory rest time. That is due to the fact that there was a special stage that had a required time to complete of five hours. If you completed it early, you could rest for the remaining time or you could move on to the next stage. If you decided to move on, the portion of the remaining mandatory five hours is added to the teams compulsory rest time, thus resulting in more than the pre-set 27 hours. If you took more than five hours to complete the special section, the time it took you beyond the five hours, is then subtracted from your compulsory rest time.
Get it? Does any of that make sense?
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