posted Apr 11th, 2010 - The videos of the Top 11 at the World Challenge 2010 have been uploaded, and they feature the very unique Round 3.

What was so special about it? The sequence of Round 3 was already the second one with three blocks (20-17-8), one of the four rounds in Bedford with only blocks. That alone is already quite unusual. The combination of one round with only Random Formations and four rounds with only Blocks does not happen very often - if it has ever happened.

A 3-block sequence usually does not shake up the leaderboard very much. Round 1 showed this already clearly, as the Top 8 were separated by only two points in this round, seven of those teams only by one single point. It was almost exactly the same situation after the 3-block sequence of Round 3.

World Challenge 2010 - Round 3 of the Top 11 in Final Ranking Order

The very unique and special feature of Round 3 was a very different one. The Top 11 of the final leaderboard combined for a total of zero penalties in Round 3.

This extraordinary result motivated the NSL News to create a new scoring table for the Top 11. It was interesting to see how many penalties each round would create, and the results were not very surprising. The two fastest rounds (2 and 9) ended up on the top of the penalty rankings. It was still unexpected that only one of the four 3-block sequences (1, 3, 4, 7) would end up on the very bottom. Round 3 had no penalties for the Top 11 at all, Round 6 with a mixed sequence (21-C-G-6) was second with only one point deduction.

The total of 47 point deductions for the Top 11 after all ten rounds seems to be remarkably low. This stands for an average of 0.4 penalties for each team per round, or for 4.3 penalties for each team over ten rounds. Those numbers may be different for the whole field.

Only two teams in the whole AAA Class field did not have any point deductions, the Pro Team from Finland and Phobia from the United Kingdom. The Pro Team was not judged in Round 10, as Finland's national team did not make the final cut, and Phobia's scoresheets for Rounds 9 and 10 were also not available.

NMP-PCH Hayabusa and Kaizen collected the highest number of penalties with eight point deductions each. Hayabusa used all ten rounds for the damage, while Kaizen did the same in only eight rounds.

Aerokart PCs, Aerokart Deep Blue and SDC Rhythm XP were the cleanest Top 11 teams with only one penalty each. Germany's ISB Air, Austria's Alpen Glow and UK's Escondido also tied the cleanest record with only one point deduction each.