I ask this because pretty much every episode in this series (and a lot of the episodes in the last 2 series) lead teams have not been able to get a huge lead.
Sure they’ll finish 4-6 hours ahead of the rest of the pack, but the next morning they’ll have to wait for a train or something similar and all the teams will catch up negating their lead.
Do/can the producers plan this? Or does it just work out like this?
MtM
In the first season, the first place team finished far, far ahead of the third place finishers, Team Guido, who were 12 (24?) hours and a Pit Stop behind. The producers even arranged for them to receive a note to that effect. IIRC, it was just before the Roadblock involving scuba diving into a frozen Alaskan lake. They should have put the note in the lake so that they would have been forced to make the icy plunge. But I digress.
I agree that there appears to be a lot more bunching up in later seasons. I think that the producers arrange for this in a few ways. The teams may be required to fly on a few specific flights, or depart from a specific train station. There may be charter buses that only travel at specific times. The challenge itself may only be open for a limited time. Even so, there have been instances where a team wandered off into the desert or otherwise fell so far behind that the “clue” they received when they got to their destination was simply a note telling them to go right to the Pit Stop, where they were summarily dismissed by Phil. This has happened less often, so it looks like the producers are still tinkering with the formula.
Yes, they have taken steps to keep the teams closer together. They did this for several reasons.
First, they feel it makes better TV. After all, if one team is a continent behind the others, you really don’t expect them to win. If everyone is bunched up it is a more exciting race to the finish.
Second, it helps the teams some. Near the end of the first Race two teams got knocked 24 hours behind the other two. At this point, because of operating hours, flight schedules and the like, it became impossible for either of these two teams to catch up. Watching, you knew that whatever these two tried was an exercise in futility. With more bunching it is possible for a team to recover from a mistake; if they survive the leg they are still in the Race.
Third, it helps the producers from a logistics standpoint. The most obvious thing here is that Phil has to be at the mat at the Pit Stop in order to welcome the teams and to tell the last team they are eliminated. If the first team will arrive at a Pit Stop in Europe only a few hours after the last team arrives at a Pit Stop in southern Africa, it is pretty much impossible for Phil to be at both. (This actually happened in the second Race.) The same problems hold for the camera and production crews. The crew that is waiting for the last team to do the last Roadblock on the previous leg may be the one that is supposed to be filming the Detour in the current leg that the first team is about to arrive at. (That’s the real reason a late-running last team is instructed to head directly to the Pit Stop instead of going through the last task; there’s no one there to film them!)
So, there are lots of reasons why they do it that way. I submit that it actually is better for the Race too. Finishing in the top three now requires that a team be consistently good Racers. They can’t get lucky in one leg and coast through the next few. (Unless they are consistently lucky, of course.)
I disagree that it makes for a better race, for a similar but opposite reason: I don’t think a badly performing team should have the opportunity to take the lead all because they get lucky with a bunch-up.
I agree with Trigonal Planar. I think it makes the race less interesting. Especially considering who won last year. If it had not been for the consistant bunching, no way would the outcome have been the same. I don’t like seeing the last leg basically come down to luck.
Perhaps what they could do is not make every single leg have bunching, but maybe bunch every 3rd leg or something. This lets the teams that are bad racers get cut, without the element of luck, yet should still keep everyone fairly close.
I agree also, the bunching makes the race too random. The teams race for all this time, and it ends up coming down to who gets the best cab driver or travel agent.
I understand that the race has to have some bunching due to production constraints, but they could do more to maintain the ordering of the teams. Maybe mini-pit stops at the different tasks, where the teams’ relative positions are maintained somehow.
I’m not really sure if it would be a good idea or not, but they could also set it up so that everyone starts every leg of the race at the same time, and they just add up the total time for each leg. That would force the bunching of teams that the producers want, and also mostly eliminate the problem of some teams starting at 2AM and having to wait for shops to open and things like that. Then when it gets down to maybe 3 or 4 teams, they can start staggered for the last leg and just race to the finish.