Chase Race Basics
In a chase race, category starts are staggered, with slower categories starting before faster categories. (This is why chase races are sometimes called “handicap races”.)
For example, a chase race may have these category start times:
- Category D – 12:00
- Category C – 12:03
- Category B – 12:05
- Category A – 12:07
Race organizers calculate start times to give faster categories a chance to catch slower groups near the end of the race, so the front of the race contains multiple categories as riders near the finish.
Chase races begin as team efforts, but end as individual efforts. That’s what makes the format so compelling. If your category’s pack isn’t working together to keep the speed up, they won’t be able to catch the group up the road and may be caught by a chasing group from behind. But chase races always end as individual efforts as you sprint for the line against your category, and often other categories as well!
The Now and Not Yet
Unlike some of the race concepts I’ve written about in this series, such as elimination and relay races, chase races are already happening on Zwift, and have been since the early days. Most chase races are long-running weekly events put on by the community, including DIRT Dadurday, COALITION Chase To The Underground, and Rhino Crash. But Zwift’s own Party Crashers and long-gone Beat the Bots events were basically chase races as well, even if they were classified as group rides.
Looking for a chase race? There’s no easy way to pull up a comprehensive list of upcoming chase races on Zwift, apart from listing all upcoming events with “chase” in the title on ZwiftHacks >
Chase races are already happening daily on Zwift, and they can be super fun. But the experience is lacking in four key areas, as I see it:
- No time gaps to groups: Unless you have Sauce for Zwift running, or you’re really good at clicking through the rider list or watching ZwiftPower’s Live view, it’s hard to discern time gaps to other categories. Are you closing the gap to the group ahead fast enough? Will you be able to stay away from the group behind?
- Bad start time gaps: Because courses, group sizes, and rider abilities vary, it’s not always easy (in fact, it’s nearly impossible) to set the perfect start times for each group. Sometimes rider organizers get it wrong, and that can cost you the race, no matter how hard you ride.
- Team chat: If the other categories are visible in game, they can also see your chat messages. This makes it impossible to privately chat with your group.
- Miscategorized riders: This is less of a problem nowadays thanks to category enforcement and better categorization systems, but it’s still worth mentioning, since just one overpowered rider in a group can throw everything off. (I was once in a chase race where a current pro rider joined the B’s and pulled us to the front in record time!)
Let’s look at how Zwift could take Chase Races to the next level!
Required Game Changes
If Zwift wants to level up their chase race game, they need to focus on implementing game upgrades that help ensure a consistently fun experience for everyone who joins. Let’s discuss three specific game upgrades that would address the key issues mentioned above. Each of these is a standalone improvement that could be used in other areas of the game. Implementing them together, though, would radically improve the chase race experience:
Category-Only Chat Option
This is the easiest feature for Zwift to roll out and, in fact, it may already be an event option I don’t know about. Simply put: ride organizers should be able to restrict chat visibility so only members of the same category see in-game chat messages. This would let riders communicate closely with their “teammates” without alerting other teams about their plans.
Time Gap UI
If Zwift added smarter time gaps into the HUD, everyone could see how far away the other categories are. It would take some doing to make this work in a useful way. For example – what time do you show for the group ahead? Do you show the rider who is furthest up the road from the group, or the group’s main “peloton”, or the closest rider to your group? Or maybe all three?
It would require no small effort to build this feature out so it’s intuitive yet informative. But it could be done, and could be used in typical Zwift scratch races and group rides.
Dynamic Pens
This is the coolest of the new feature ideas, IMO, because it would feel a bit magical.
What if you simply clicked to join the chase race event, and it automatically broke riders up into groups and set time gaps based on rider numbers, route, race length, and rider abilities? Done right, it would make races more fair and fun for everyone.
As a bonus, the dynamic pens idea could be leveraged for other Zwift race formats as well!
Fun For All
The end goal, of course, is maximizing the fun (funmaxxing?) for everyone. Whether you’re one of the slowest or one of the fastest, a well-organized chase race should deliver an experience of teamwork and competition for all riders.
Your Thoughts
What are your thoughts on chase races? Any improvement ideas I didn’t mention above? Chime in below!
Yes Dynamic Pens! And also it could be written to allow native team racing in Zwift – a huge feature that it truly needs.
I tried some chase races and found it not particularly fun even beyond the mentioned issues. In the end, whoever sits in on the group (and there will always be that someone) sprints for the win. So native team racing in Zwift should indeed be the priority. That would be the more important change and as a side effect it might improve chase races.
Add small coloured dots to the route profile below the HUD map to represent other riders. This avoids calculating exact time differences but gives a visual indication of how far ahead/behind other riders and categories are. Make it stack dots so that large groups are obvious but also show single dots for solo breaks and dropped riders. Have an HUD setting option to put the profile with rider dots in the middle of the screen where climb profiles appear so it can be large and useful during events.
Didn’t there used to be AutoCat pen allocations a few years ago as that were run by WTRL over the Summer? I don’t recall doing any so don’t know if that worked or not. Perhaps the fact it doesn’t happen anymore tells the story?
I vaguely remember that. I think I was injured (hit by a car while stupidly riding on the road and not Zwift) about that time, so I didn’t do many, but it seems that the autocategorization was…wanting.
Great idea on dynamic pens. You can only make pen start changes 4 hours before so if group fills up fast in that 0-4 hour period the calculations are off. The rider list time gaps has been broken forever, its wildly inaccurate. Best thing you can fan view someone in chaser or chased group see their distance and then compare to yours. We fence our groups to manage the group speed, fence drops when caught so riders can join the group that catches.
Finding these types of rides is hard, ZC needs a good overhaul. One thing that would be good would be an improvement of filters. Groups Rides split into 1) Coffee Ride 2) Group Non Structured Workout (at the mercy of the beacon’s evil) 3) Chase/Hunt. Races could then be split into 1) ITT, 2) TTT 3) Solo Races 4) Team Races
I think it’s time to get rid of “start pens” altogether and have every race and group ride start next to any arch.
As well as this increasing the number of start locations, you could have chase groups released at set intervals in a similar way to how time trials release individuals at set times.
Or let us start at the top of Alp and Vonteux.
To set reasonable time gaps between categories is definitely not an easy task. It requires a lot of experience with the choosen route. That’s why it is not easy to have chase races on varying routes. A dynamic pen as suggested would make it much easier to change routes more often.
Missing in Zwift is also a good view who is in which cat while racing. I hoped they would continue the hud improvements with the nearby player panel so you could see the cats there, since viewing it on the minimap or ZCA isnt always the easiest way to check.
With the BMTR format its category like the others with D off first and time gaps , where the format differs you have to work as a team the winning time over the line is calculated on your category leader who you have to protect the more riders you keep together rotating on the front the faster your group goes
in my view the biggest miss in party crashers is no tally of how many people passed you from group E or how many people on group D you passed. A group place and an overall place would be nice.
Definitely, and each caught rider should turn into whatever the chasers are, alien to cowboy for example.
One more suggestion regarding time gaps on course. Why not have a live motorcycle (or bot) with each pack, displaying a time gap board from each group’s leader, or have a fixed timing spot at a chosen interval? Feels like we’re flying blind most of the time.
In my experience as a lower powered A/Advanced rider, the strongest (inc Black A) riders in the group are often whinging about others needed to take a turn, despite them barely being able to hold the wheel.
“As a bonus, the dynamic pens idea could be leveraged for other Zwift race formats as well!” this is a great idea
“Miscategorized riders” is less of a problem? As long as i see 300W 3,6wkg riders winning C Cat races its as bad as ever, same problem for years. A system that only takes effect after they destroyed 2-3races is just not good enough
Party crashers was a great idea. Somehow I was frozen and in the wrong group as I signed up as a chaser but will definitely try again.
Chase races have long been my favourite option. It’s great to have a team race and agree with your points above and as mentioned in an earlier part to your piece – a way to index chase races so you can easily find them would be good.
I do think many people don’t realise they are there and am glad you have written this to help gain momentum for them as the more people who enter the better they are.
@Eric Schlange One easy way that Zwift could show the relative positions of the various groups in a chase race is using what data analysts call a box plot. It’s a quick way to visually represent the high and low of a data set and where the main / mean blob of data is. If you did an offset stack of box plots for each group in a chase race, it would be very easy to understand relative distances / times between groups, if chasers have started to catch earlier groups and if the main blob has caught up to an earlier group.