RC crawler competition rules, classes and scoring
Everything a comp director has to decide before the first gate, and what the sanctioning bodies each cover. If you are here to run your first comp, the short version is that you need a ruleset, two or three classes, a handful of courses and a way to score them.
How a crawl comp works
A crawl comp is a set of short, difficult courses driven one truck at a time. Each course is a lane through rocks, roots or a built obstacle, with numbered gates the driver has to pass through in order. The driver gets a time limit and a judge who watches the run.
Mistakes add points and cleared gates subtract them, so the lowest total wins. A clean run does not score zero, it scores below zero: under SORRCA every gate cleared is worth −2, so a driver who gets through all ten of them untouched sits at −20 before any bonus gates. That is the thing that surprises people coming from racing.
Time matters, but not the way it does in racing. Each course has a limit, and running out of it ends the run. You do not win by being quick, so nobody is racing the clock. What time is for is breaking ties, which is why most clubs write down the time left on the timer even though it is not part of the score.
Everyone in a class runs every course, and the totals are added up at the end. A comp with three classes and six courses is a full but manageable day.
Classes, and why they exist
A class exists so people are not beaten by their wallet. Put a stock trail truck against a purpose built comp rig and the comp rig wins every time, and the trail truck driver does not come back.
Classes are usually split two ways at once:
- By scale. 1/24 and 1/18 for micros, which fit an indoor course and are where most hobby shop comps live. 1/10 for the larger trucks, which usually need outdoor terrain or a big built course.
- By how modified the truck is. Most scale rulesets number their classes roughly from most stock to most modified. Class 1 is typically a body-on-frame truck that looks like a real one, and the higher numbers allow progressively more competition oriented parts.
The exact boundaries are set by whichever ruleset you adopt, and they change between bodies and between seasons. Do not copy a class list off another club and assume it matches the rulebook you are running.
Running your first comp? Two classes beats five. You can always split a class next time. Splitting it because eleven people showed up and only two entered a class is how you end up handing out a trophy for finishing.
The rulesets: SORRCA, RCMCCA, WRCCA, UKRCCA
Four bodies write most of the rules used in RC crawling. They are not in charge of you. Adopting one means your drivers already know the rules, your results compare with other clubs, and you are not arbitrating a rules argument you wrote yourself.
- SORRCAScale Off Road RC AssociationMostly 1/10 scale
The most widely used scale ruleset, and the one the largest number of directors reach for first. It is built around scale trucks that look like the real thing, with classes separated by how far the truck is modified away from stock. The rules are revised for each season, which is why people search for the year.
SORRCA has no website. The current rulebook is published and discussed in their Facebook group, and clubs generally link to a copy of the PDF.
- RCMCCA (opens in new tab)RC Micro Crawler Competition Association1/24 and 1/18 scale
The micro side of the sport, which is where a lot of indoor and hobby shop comps live because a course fits on a table. Covers class rules, approved tires, and a list of member clubs.
- WRCCA (opens in new tab)World RC Crawler AssociationComp-style trucks
Aimed at purpose built comp rigs rather than scale trucks, so the classes are defined by driveline and steering rather than by how stock the body is. If your course is technical and your regulars run competition chassis, this is usually the ruleset that fits.
- UKRCCA (opens in new tab)UK RC Crawler Association1/24, 1/18 and 1/10
The UK body, running its own class structure across several scales and a national series.
Each body owns its own rules and revises them between seasons. Always take the current text from the body itself rather than from a copy on a club site, which is frequently a season or two behind.
How scoring works
Almost every crawling ruleset scores the same way underneath, even when the point values differ. The judge adds points for each thing that goes wrong, and the driver with the fewest points wins.
| Call | What it means |
|---|---|
| Gate | The truck missed a gate, took it backwards, or knocked a gate marker down. Usually the largest single penalty. |
| Reverse | The truck backed up. Small, and taken repeatedly, which is what makes it add up. |
| Rollover | The truck went over and had to be righted. |
| Touch or reposition | The driver or a helper handled the truck. Some rulesets separate a touch from a full reposition and charge them differently. |
| Point-out | The driver ends the run rather than keep going. Scores a fixed maximum rather than an open ended pile of penalties, so one bad course cannot end someone’s day. |
| DNF and DNS | Did not finish and did not start. Both score a set figure so the driver stays in the standings rather than dropping out of them. |
| Bonus | Optional gates worth negative points, for a harder line. This is how you reward the driver who tries something. |
Two details cause most of the scoring arguments, and they are worth settling out loud at the drivers meeting rather than in the middle of a run:
- What a point-out keeps. Under most scale rules a driver who points out loses any bonus gates they had earned but keeps the progress they made through the course. Whether your ruleset works that way is the first thing to check.
- How ties break. Two drivers on the same total is common in a small class, and SORRCA does not publish a tiebreaker, so it is yours to set. Time remaining is the usual answer, sometimes after a count of clean runs. Pick one before the day rather than after it.
Scale points
SORRCA scores the truck as well as the run. Before the comp starts, each rig is teched in and earns scale points for looking and working like a real truck: body panels that fill out the shape of a real vehicle rather than leaving the chassis on show, a spare tire mounted on a rim, and scale accessories such as a winch, lights, mirrors, a jack or a tow strap. They are negative points, capped per class, and they carry into the driver’s score. A well built rig starts the day below zero before it turns a wheel.
The reason they exist is the reason classes exist. Without them nothing stops a scale class filling up with stripped down tube chassis that happen to fit inside the written limits, and the people who built a truck that looks like a truck stop entering.
Three things worth knowing before you decide to run them:
- Plenty of clubs skip them, and that is a normal choice. Scale points are a SORRCA idea. RCMCCA, WRCCA and UKRCCA define their classes by what the truck is built from rather than by an appearance score, and a lot of clubs running SORRCA courses leave the scale scoring out. Skipping them makes the day shorter and the scoring simpler, and gives up the thing that keeps the class looking like trucks.
- They cost you time on the day. Every rig has to be teched, one at a time, by somebody who knows the ruleset well enough to make the calls and defend them. That is real time before your first run and it needs a person who is not also running the comp.
- The values move between seasons. The per-class maximums are revised, so take them from the body’s current rulebook rather than from a copy saved on a club site, which is often a season or two behind.
One detail that catches people out: scale points do not vanish when the run goes wrong. Under SORRCA a driver who does not finish still keeps half of the scale points they teched in with. A driver who never starts the course gets none. If you are scoring by hand, that is the rule most likely to be missed.
Running your own comp
The work is mostly decided before anyone arrives. In order:
Pick a ruleset
Either adopt a body’s rules or write your own. Most clubs start by adopting one and then add a house class for whatever their regulars actually own.
Set your classes
A class is a group of trucks fair to run against each other. Two or three is plenty to start. More classes means more runs and a longer day, not a better comp.
Build the courses
A course is one lane through the terrain with numbered gates. Four to eight courses is typical. Vary the difficulty so a new driver finishes something and your fast regulars still get beaten by one.
Decide rounds and time
Every driver runs every course, usually once. Set a time limit per run so the day ends when you said it would.
Brief your judges
One judge per course is the usual arrangement. The single biggest source of arguments is two judges calling a gate touch differently, so walk the course together first.
Post the results
Drivers want to see where they placed before they get in the truck to drive home. Whatever you score on, have an answer for that.
Score sheets
The traditional answer is a printed sheet per driver per course, which works perfectly well right up until the end of the day. Then somebody adds up two hundred rows by hand while thirty people stand around waiting, and the one column that got smudged in the rain is the one that decides second place.
That is the job Crawl Scorekeeper does. Your judges score on their phones, fully offline, because crawling happens where there is no signal. When a phone gets service the runs upload and the standings are worked out here, on a page you can send your drivers before they leave.
It is free. You set your own classes, courses and scoring categories, or start from a body’s ruleset and change what you need.
Set up your compAndroid app (opens in new tab)iPhone app (opens in new tab)
Want to see what a finished comp looks like first? Browse comps other clubs have run.