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Check with your high school to see if they are using Freedom Flights Wright Stuff kit. They will have some excellent rubber that you can make a rubber band with several loops. You can have more power available from this than the wheels can accept without spinning, 3 loops of about 12" will power a 1 meter car.
Alternative is to get the longest rubber bands that Wall Mart has in a package. 2 or 3 or 4 of these as one loop will give you far more power than you currently have. They are about 10" long and about 1/8 " wide. They will stretch a bit over 2 feet .

We used science geek wheels with wide rubber bands for traction. We used 4 on each side for the drive wheels and 2 per side for the front wheels (brakes)

You add as much power as the wheels will take without spinning.

What wheels/axles are you using?

Both the strength and the duration of the power stroke are important. Ideally, your vehicle will be under power for all of the first 8 1/2 meters. To accomplish that you either need a mechanism for multiplying the movement of your bands such as a boom lever or you need longer bands and more room for them to stretch out. To increase the duration of the power stroke on one of my teams' vehicles, they used a pivot rod and doubled the elastic back the length of the chassis. It ran 2:29 and 2:26 respectively but sadly, the accuracy did not match the speed and they got beat by 2.25 points. If they'd have been more accurate, they would have run away with the gold.

We ran a 12" loop of 4 strands of about 0.050 rubber, from the rear to a pulley near the front and back to the drive axle. Was under power for about 6.5 m and did not slow down that much in the last 2 meters. It did slow down enough by the 11m that it did not skid.

In practice a low score for our team is usually around 4960 and more common is 4970. At competition I would expect, worst possible scenario, for our score to be 4950. Do you think we have a good shot at placing at Nationals?

What chance does a score of 4960 have of placing?

4960 is a very good score. The champion in my state had a score of 1450. Based on the results of our state tourney, and what I have seen in the past decade, I would think that a score of 4960 would be in the top 5 or so at Nationals. Nice job! Just don't break anything between now and then.

Sorry. I meant to say that the champion of my state had a score of 4950.

Does anyone know the top 6 scores at nationals? It would be much appreciated

rpaul48 wrote:Does anyone know the top 6 scores at nationals? It would be much appreciated

4971.075
4965.855
4963.9
4963.445
4962.395
4961.42

Thank You very much!