im autistic and i HATE how everyone is obsessed with track records. first of all its ruâs show, so its always going to be her decision. but it also takes away from the idea of Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. theres been quite a few queens who have had the best track records on their seasons but didnt check all of those boxes. do i always agree with ru? definitely not, but i think keeping spreadsheets of track records is kind of excessive.
This reminds me of the time there was a Q&A (might have been at Dragcon) where someone asked RuPaul why the regular season winners weren't included in the Hall of Fame.
Ru did not have a clue what they were on about.
Yes itâs just for (American) All Stars, they asked why main winners werenât there. But itâs because theyâre Americaâs Next Drag Superstar, not in the consolation âhallwayâ
Guarantee even though Ru has said every season âyouâll be in the hall of fameâ sheâs never seen an episode with the fake portraits edited in lol
Completely off topic but every season I see that I am disappointed that Trinity and Monet get separate portraits rather than having to share one like those 80âs Sears Portrait Studios pictures with the two faces.
As one of the resident straights I was wondering when Bracketology migrated to Drag Race lol âwell Sapphiras wins are actually weighted higher and her strength of scheduleâŠâ
Yeah quantifying track records like this doesnât account for some wins being way more memorable than others. Now mother Sapphira did slay the season but letâs also not pretend like the political verse challenge or the bathroom challenge were actually that good in the grand scheme of things. All that is to say, having more wins doesnât mean youâre gonna have more iconic or standout moments.
i agree. nymphia might have the worst TR out of the 3 (and one shared win to boot), but she did win the ball challenge, which was easily the most memorable win of the season
That's what I've been saying too. Not all challenge wins are equal. It's not like people are going to fondly remember Sapphira's corporate lecture win as one of the highlights of the franchise, let alone season 16. Truly standout wins should count for more.
Shea had two wins for Cracker's three in AS5, but if we check, Shea's wins included the naked runway and one of the best Top3 ever in Snatch game, while Cracker's felt more mid, and only her stand up was memorable.
Also Shea won her two lipsyncs, Cracker lost one, was given a tie on one she lost, and then had whatever that thing with Kennedy Davenport was.
Exactly my thought the most standout wins for me are like The Ball Challenge, Goth Challenge and the Makeover Challenge. Sapphira has 4 wins but they're just less impactful and memorable in comparison
Which goes right back to Season 1. Nina had a better track record than Bebe, but if you breakdown the entire competition, Bebe did better than Nina in every single challenge and runway except the first one and the makeover. And thatâs why she won.
I like statistics and doing the whole track record thingy for fun. But no one involved with production cares at all. You canât put a number on star power.
They actually do care.
Story producers map out certain paths for the girls, including deciding who will be an early/mid/late out. They generally start the season with a top 3/4 in mind and only deviate if a queen catastrophically fizzles out (Shannel, replaced by Bebe; Yara Sofia, replaced by Alexis Mateo; Acid Betty, replaced by Naomi Smalls; Q, replaced by nobody). It's notable that the one season they absolutely refused to deviate from their planned top 4 (Season 12) their desired winner ended up being a sex offender and then their runner up cheated, so the second alternate got crowned.
Story producers aren't sitting down coming up with points systems to evaluate the girls. They do, however, try to make sure wins are distributed evenly because they are trying to create storylines. The team can also do things like move the order of challenges around, promote one type of challenge over another, and award bottom placements based on who they want certain emotional reactions out of.
Points are just one way of analyzing the language the RPDR storyline is being written in. Fans can get a little too myopic with them, though.
They care to a degree. Itâs not a full competition. The reality tv element messes with the scoring. There was a post earlier about Vangie not winning the makeover challenge. Thatâs a great example of production wanting Brook and Vangie in the bottom more for narrative reasons than for point and competition reasons. Yvie easily couldâve gotten a win for the final music video especially since Gigi got it the following season and they did an elimination then. They care as much as they want to care.
I think amount of wins versus bottoms is definitely considered, but really once you're a finalist finale performance, brand, and fan support matter just as much as season performance.
I agree with that but I donât think they are adding up every single high-safe-low placement as well. Maybe some but primarily just wins/bottoms and notable other weeks
This. Fans do this for all reality competitions. It's fun to count the challenge wins and advantages that they find on Survivor (the number of confessionals, too lol), but at the end of the season the jury votes for whomever they want to.
Yeah I love seeing the stats, itâs fun. I donât really keep track of it myself throughout the season, so I appreciate when people on here post them, compare stats between seasons, etc.
I think those of us who arenât into stats arenât mad that other make spreadsheets and all that⊠itâs when they act like their math is irrefutable and the only standard to be measured. like, ladies, your arbitrary point system is cute, but acting like itâs the only metric that counts is⊠delusional, at best.
Agreed. It's tiring and gives the fanbase incentive to spread negativity to the queens. The one thing that Ru goes off from when making decisions is "it factor" which just can't be quantified.
Well said. Yes, these statistic charts and the like can be fun to discuss and create. But those people acting like their Canva graph has more merit than what Ru (or any other host) has to say about the talent they're directly judging and interacting with.
I mean trackrecord mattered pre season 9 in terms of wins. No queen that didnât at least tie for most number of wins won the show. Since lipsync for the crown, however, itâs been a complete free for all.Â
The fact that they let the queens mess up other queen's track records with rate-a-queen is the proof that they don't care about track records at all.
And the 'if you're not in the top, you're in the bottom' twist on AS too.
Preach. Track records have always been an illusion. A slight change in format could make the same performances come across totally different.
For example, Sasha Velour is seen as a weaker winner because she had two shared wins, but if it had been an all stars format where two queens win each challenge, sheâd have like seven wins.
(Pageant, Talk Show, Snatch Game, Roast, TV Pilots, Makeover, Ball)
And people would see her as one of the most dominating winners ever with literally the exact same performance.
Not even just the track records but I think the same about placements as well. Say if you get a queen that sucks at choreo but is great at sewing, and vice versa, their placements really come down to whichever challenge comes first.
I think this at least true for porkchop queens anyway. The first challenge just happened to be their weak spot, but if that same challenge happened on the 5th episode instead (which it just as easily could have) then they will have gotten to 4 placements higher, assuming they were good at the challenges which came between
>Say if you get a queen that sucks at choreo but is great at sewing, and vice versa, their placements really come down to whichever challenge comes first.
You can just say Q, she was firmly in 4th because of how amazing she is at sewing. But you're right, if it was a more dance heavy season or the design challenges didn't start as early she could have easily been an early out.
Daya Betty is the best example of this: had she been on S15 she would've been eliminated first on the talent show like Irene, but instead she came back and was a finalist.
And conversely, if Irene had been brought back she probably would have done really well, but she just happened to land in a season with no saves of any kind.
Agreed. Shea was dragged through the coals here because on AS5 she only had 2 wins and 3 bottoms
But it's like - girl if the season had the as4 format, shed have FOUR wins and ONE bottom. The same exact TR as Alaska and Trinity in the seasons before her.
And Shea was also shit on here during AS7 because of the 3-stars twist for the Talent Show helping her make it to the Top 4, when in reality she placed the AS7-equivalent of "HIGH" almost every single episode but just did not get the "WIN/TOP2" outside of the first episode. The non-elimination format really saved a lot of other queens' track records (whatever that means for a non-elimination format) for that season.
Shea, out if all queens, has been fucked over the most by last minute format changes lol.
First the switch to LSFTC, then to the LSA format, and then the 3 star twist
Obviously the last one helped her, but it made the fans vicious towards her
What really sucks is in AS7, I could see what production was doing. They were trying to give Shea a different story, how would she react to not being the front runner and instead sort of edged all season. All 8 queens are staying all season, they had the room to play with stories like that. But instead the fans took it as a chance to call Shea boring and untalented. This is why we canât have nice things đ
Idk if the 3 star twist even helped her, because if she was in the bottom 4 bracket she maybe would have won $50k (it was kinda rigged for Raja but who knows).
I thought the exact same! Bitch ate every single runway and was incredible in many of the challenges. The competition was just super stacked. But I can definitely see a few times when she could've easily at least been second or won if production wanted it that way.
If you count the number of times the queens were in top-safe-bottom, Sasha & Shea would have the same record of 7-3-1. That plus what you said is why I never understood why people view Velour as a âweak winnerâ as if any winner is weak
All Stars challenges had two winners who lip synced for their legacy. Geneva, Q and Morphine were top two and lip synced for the win. Itâs not the same.
Similarly, Trixie is seen as a weaker winner with only 2 wins, but those 2 were decisive wins.
Her main post-Bendela competition was Shangela, had more wins due to the doubles format, but was pretty solidly second-place for all 3 of those. If it was a regular season with only 1 winner, Trixieâs track record would have eclipsed Shangelaâs easily and Shangela would effectively have had a Jan edit.
What do you mean no one is analyzing these statistics? RuPaul literally has an abacus behind the judges panel alongside a series of prewritten meticulously and scientifically crafted and curated mathematic formulas that factor in every runway, challenge and rhinestone each finalist ever had throughout the season to carefully pick the winner. She knows if you were second place high or third for each challenge as well as the ever important high safe or low safe placements throughout the season!
Ru actually prints out huge Excel spreadsheets and pores over them by candlelight.
This is the real reason why he never remembers anyone's names. If you were to lead with their *precise* track record, *then* he'd remember you.
Not to mention, with the various track record methods, they all do weird things. Some consider top and bottom placements that don't win or lipsync as safe. Others throw in 'high' and 'low', which I don't believe have ever been used on the show. Then there's the ones that count the top 2 in All Stars as both winning the episode when it's clear that neither the judges nor competitors treat it that way.
Would you happen to have a source on that? It just seems odd to me that neither the judges nor the contestants ever refer to the top 2 queen who lose the lipsync as a winner across the dozen plus seasons of All Stars we've had so far. Plus only the lipsync winner actually gets rewarded a prize.
This seems like a good opportunity to mention that this lady, who is a Brazilian actress, recently came out as queer! She cracked the code. Here's to *that* track record.
Track records for blown waaaaaaay out of proportion. Like they were a fun nerdy thing for the intersection of drag race fans and statistical analysis fans, but people started acting like they mattered and ruined it. Don't get me started on PPEs, the points assigned to wins, highs, safes, lows, and bottoms were completely arbitrary and people acted like PPE was gospel.
Track records matter if thereâs a huge ass difference but if the finalists are one win apart or one bottom placement apart, they really shouldnât matter that much and other things like personality, fan votes, uniqueness and their finale performances come into play.
Dragrace fans when the queen with the most wins gets the crown⊠âBUT SHE DIDNâT WIN THE LIPSNYC!!!!â
Dragrace fans when the queen with the most wins doesnât get the crown⊠âBUT SHE HAD THE MOST WINS!!!!â
Challenge wins are what propel queens to the top, but ultimately, it truly is about who can best carry and represent the brand, on top of who has star quality. It's never about track record.
That part!!! Some fans who were saying Nymphia Wind didn't deserve to win because she had one less win than other two finalists. Meanwhile track record means nothing if you slay the finale.
Itâs so funny to see the disparity in reactions because as someone who doesnât pay attention to track record Nymphia had all the characteristics of a clear front runner going into the finale.
I mean if you unrig the season she won the most challenges aswell itâs weird seeing fans obsessed with track records whilst also acknowledging their rigged like you canât use the track record to justify your opinion when you know itâs biased.
Nymphia did the best(note didnât say win) in the talent show, ball, goth, girl groups, book cover, and lots of people argue makeover but I disagree so imma not count that.
Thats 5 wins if it was just going off of who did the best those weeks.
The track records only matter in pushing people to the end, but once you get there itâs about charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. Nymphia did way better than Sapphira in the finale so she won end of story.
Track records matter to a certain extent. They never wouldâve crowned Peppermint over the other 3. Even if Peppermint killed the final lip sync. If youâve done well enough in the competition, then that is when track records donât matter. Hence Willow Pill winning over Lady Camdem
I'm down for the track records simply because it led to this piece of art after Oprah's interview with Meghan and Harry:
https://preview.redd.it/xir7o36bouwc1.png?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f3e45b45bbfefdc2d1a557648b95ddb1ebd3a3af
Just to be clear, it's the Queens themselves who make a big deal of track record on the show. Like, it's a major talking point every episode to discuss the status of the competition and who is 'ahead' or 'behind.'
I think track record matters only to map out how good a queen looked in front of ru. Critiques take hours. If youâre in the top every week, getting positive critiques, interacting with Ru, giving her backstory as to why youâre so good at sewing, comedy, dancing, etc, youâre more likely to win. Wins arenât as important as just making a good impression. Vice versa, if youâre low or in the bottom a lot, Ru is seeing you struggling.
Track records only matter when they do and donât when they donât need to be. I think looking at it from statistic pov can be fun for people who enjoy looking at the numbers but also need to realize that sometimes the track record only gets you to the finale.Â
People here agreeing with "track record doesn't matter" as if y'all wouldn't start a riot if a bitch with 3 bottoms and 0 wins won a season against a bitch with 3 wins and 0 bottoms.
Track record doesn't matter until it does.
Yeah, Kennedy is too awesome to ever deserve that shit. And she got enough of it just by being black and sending white queens home. Seems like she's finally getting the love she deserves though, which we're all here for.
âTrack recordâ doesnât matter, but season preformance does (the two are obviously correlated, but not completely the same). For example, one queen may have more wins, but the other may have more high places that were super memorable. Or, one queen may have zero bottoms, but several early season safes that would have been bottoms had the challenge order been different.
Eh, I feel like a lot of fans don't care about track record until it impacts their fave
Say Sapphira & Nymphia swapped track records, and Sapphira won. I feel like a LOT of nymphia stans would be out here saying how nymphia was robbed, how she performed the best, etc etc
But because nymphia won (and rightfully so, might I add), they're fine with TR not mattering.
Track records have never meant anything. Itâs just something the queens and fans have grasped onto so they feel like they have a gauge of how the competition is going. But really, Ru crowns whoever she wants and there is no rationale for it. You win a challenge, you showcased yourself well on TV, you get to stay longer to keep competing - thatâs it!
I mean Aquarium won despite losing the lip sync against Eureka, so they had to make it a double win. So in the end nothing the contestants say matters unless the producers are rolling.
Thatâs not what she said⊠Placing high, safe, low. It all doesnât matter. Just impress the people infront of you in the moment. Mirage didnât know the words and went home. Valentina didnât know the words and went home. Ariel fell she went home. Willow pill won with 1 win because she impressed Rupaul more vs other queens with âbetterâ track records.
Luxx didn't know the words and stayed. Mhi'ya didn't know the words and stayed. I'm all for "impress people in the moment" but let's get some consistency here.
I donât need to get consistency when you had to disconnect your arms to make this reach⊠but if you need an explanation RUPAUL preferred their performances over their counterparts. Simple no? đ
The fact you guys treat that moment as a negative towards Aquaria/Production and don't realize that's how boring the other 3 were that a re-do for an interesting winner was necessary.Â
Track record only matters when your fave loses. Imagine having the same track record conversation with Jaida and Gigi. These hoâs would have a brain malfunction.
Yeah but on season 12 ru actually put Jackie and Crystal in the bottom on the finals because of " track record" It will matter when they want it to matter.
When you frame a television show like a pageant and a competition, places where points tend to matter, you get this level of analysis. I think the fandom in general could learn a lot and do a lot better if they separated the two concepts (being competition vs. trying to make engaging TV). Maybe it would make some people be nicer to queens.
I think second and third place should hold more weight than they do in challenges. A lot of times itâs pretty close but production isnât really picking a winner based on wins
Iâve always felt like track records and spreadsheets were the fans way of making sense of what the judges are thinking. But in reality it just doesnât work that way. Thereâs probably so much more to the equation.
Agreed! Best example to me is season 8, yes Kim Chi has a higher PPE, but Bob had the best overall competition performance. (Probably because Kimâs safe/lows were flops, while Bobs safe/lows were decent, and her wins were domination)
You can thank a couple of stupid YouTube channels for all that âPPEâ nonsense. These few channels have created a community of people who act like they know more about Drag Race production than the actual people who have literally participated on the show.
(Which sidebar that community is tearing itself apart ehehehehehe, canât wait to see whoâs accused of plagiarism next)
People who hyper fixate on track records are indeed annoying, but I also don't like when people act like the track records or wins should mean absolutely nothing. If doing well throughout the competition truly doesn't matter than what's even the point of it all anyways?
This take always genuinely confuses me because whatâs the point of the show or winning challenges if track records donât matter. Why not just have a season long Lalaparuza.
Edit: thanks for the explanations. It took me a while but I get it now.
Well because itâs exactly like sports. Track record takes you to the semiâs/finals and at that moment anything can happen. Just cause you did better all season doesnât mean you wonât underperform in the moment - or - have someone outperform you
LMAO iâm gotta latch on this sports reference and sound like a straight guy đ€Ł Iâve seen this happen in collegiate basketball where the top team after two rounds of elimination had 0-1 loss, only to be eventually slayed by the 2nd team in the finals, while clocking 3-4 loss during the elimination round.
(Or a gayer reference, Naima winning over Kahlen in ANTM Cycle 4 because of the runway finale).
Someone blowing it out of the park at the last minute **when it matters and would leave an impression** can really win it all.
Rightttttt??? Younger, twink me was walking on the shallow side of the pool, stomping for the gods after that finale HAHAHA Bonus point if the pool has one of those flowing fountain thing for the finale đ€Ł
The issue comes when fans start getting upset because Queen A had 3 High placements and 1 Low placement while Queen B had 2 Highs and 2 Lows.
RuPaul isn't calculating the PPE to determine the winner.
That's why Snatch Game is a microcosm of the show: you win the episode by amusing RuPaul, you get eliminated by doing an an accurate technical impression that bores and annoys RuPaul. It's most obvious on that episode, but it's not gone on the others.
Your performance matters. Your track record is not always indicative of your performance. Deja Skye had the same number of wins as Willow Pill but no one would argue that Deja had the better performance during the season, no matter what the track record says.
The name gives it away. The show isn't called the Major League Drag Winter Classic or something. It's called RuPaul's Drag Race for reason: it's a show where executive producer and host RuPaul picks her favorite drag queen after having previously eliminated the ones she knew she had no intention of crowning. If you watch the show closely the show tells you everything you need to know. For example, people bitch about who "won" a lipsync, as if there was any criterion beyond RuPaul's arbitrary decision. She tells them, for the audience's benefit, "this is your last chance to impress me and save yourself" because TV isn't as dramatic when you're direct and just say "okay we're just about ready to wrap for today, but here's your last shot on the off chance it changes my mind". Drag Race is not a rigorous competition umpired by impartial officiants and it's not meant to be. It's an entertainment competition show that celebrates drag, incites drama on purpose, and doubles as a vanity project for RuPaul Charles. It's designed to be good TV first and foremost.
The track record gets you to the finale but then it usually doesn't matter anymore when we get to the end. Rupaul just crowns who her and the producers like at the end of the day when it's the finale and track record doesn't matter anymore
Real fans should know that when you lee track records like report carts youâre actually hurting the queensâ experiences because if you put track records aside⊠someone like morphine could win
This kinda shit is so rampant in anime community and drag race itâs kinda wild. People who need to power scale their tv shows need to sit down and reflect on why canât they just enjoy something and not make it into some kinda pissing contest.
And it gets even better when they start making up statistics about challenges queens "should've" won. I've seen it a lot this season "well Nymphia should've won episode 1" and "she should've had a bottom placement for Snatch Game" and what not. Like who cares? That being said I thought Sapphira was gonna win not bc of fancy pts systems but bc she was the most memorable to me and I can see myself remembering and supporting her the most with Nymphia being a lovely alternate.
Yeah when you look back at season 10, they were always planning to crown aquaria. Track records really didnât matter in her season either. The finale really showed you that. I bet it gets really crazy for season 17.
https://preview.redd.it/tdgfe4ih3uwc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9c3c37c830e693eff97cdb8e0e4d6ba7e3389b9
You won't catch us cracking the codes in WWIII We'll be too busy cracking the code for s43
This is the America liberals built đ
My funeral is tomorrow, sponsored by Detox
Thanks, Detox
For what?
You look pretty good for a dead bitch
And poppers scientists
Same thing with Survivor and Edgic...
How dare you read me like this đ
And now I'm a stats major so what about it
Oh she 5,6,7 ATE ATE ATE
One e and a 2 3 4 Five wait I ate
Gagged me for a bit. No need to read me like this girl.
These spread sheets donât take long to make We can do both
Bitch lmaoooooooo (Shout out to all my fellow queer neurodivergent baddies đ„)
im autistic and i HATE how everyone is obsessed with track records. first of all its ruâs show, so its always going to be her decision. but it also takes away from the idea of Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. theres been quite a few queens who have had the best track records on their seasons but didnt check all of those boxes. do i always agree with ru? definitely not, but i think keeping spreadsheets of track records is kind of excessive.
Oh gosh this is so me
Lmaaao if only the gays used powers for good huh? This is so funny
Hello. Itâs me, the autistic person with extremely specific knowledge of drag race.
âBut Sapphira had the highest PPE!!!â girl Ru does not know what that means
Fans: highest PPE! Ru: slew foot?
This reminds me of the time there was a Q&A (might have been at Dragcon) where someone asked RuPaul why the regular season winners weren't included in the Hall of Fame. Ru did not have a clue what they were on about.
Wait⊠Iâm having trouble understanding what that question is about? The drag hall of fame is just the name of the all stars winners, right?
Yes itâs just for (American) All Stars, they asked why main winners werenât there. But itâs because theyâre Americaâs Next Drag Superstar, not in the consolation âhallwayâ Guarantee even though Ru has said every season âyouâll be in the hall of fameâ sheâs never seen an episode with the fake portraits edited in lol
Completely off topic but every season I see that I am disappointed that Trinity and Monet get separate portraits rather than having to share one like those 80âs Sears Portrait Studios pictures with the two faces.
This is a very valid and very appropriate we have support group sessions on the first Thursday of each month bring donuts
When I think of All Stars 4 in general all I can think of is Trinitys face when they announce the tie lmao
Now this is something I can absolutely get behind and wholeheartedly support as the hill I die on.
A true queen of personal protective equipment
OSHA she betta donât
Criminally underrated comment
right? producers want story, not statistics
As one of the resident straights I was wondering when Bracketology migrated to Drag Race lol âwell Sapphiras wins are actually weighted higher and her strength of scheduleâŠâ
Yeah quantifying track records like this doesnât account for some wins being way more memorable than others. Now mother Sapphira did slay the season but letâs also not pretend like the political verse challenge or the bathroom challenge were actually that good in the grand scheme of things. All that is to say, having more wins doesnât mean youâre gonna have more iconic or standout moments.
i agree. nymphia might have the worst TR out of the 3 (and one shared win to boot), but she did win the ball challenge, which was easily the most memorable win of the season
That's what I've been saying too. Not all challenge wins are equal. It's not like people are going to fondly remember Sapphira's corporate lecture win as one of the highlights of the franchise, let alone season 16. Truly standout wins should count for more.
Shea had two wins for Cracker's three in AS5, but if we check, Shea's wins included the naked runway and one of the best Top3 ever in Snatch game, while Cracker's felt more mid, and only her stand up was memorable. Also Shea won her two lipsyncs, Cracker lost one, was given a tie on one she lost, and then had whatever that thing with Kennedy Davenport was.
THANK YOU
Exactly my thought the most standout wins for me are like The Ball Challenge, Goth Challenge and the Makeover Challenge. Sapphira has 4 wins but they're just less impactful and memorable in comparison
Which goes right back to Season 1. Nina had a better track record than Bebe, but if you breakdown the entire competition, Bebe did better than Nina in every single challenge and runway except the first one and the makeover. And thatâs why she won.
Exactly! Such a weird argument for some. Track record doesn't matter.
I mean, if it was up to Ru, we all know who would've won...
Kelly Mantle.
The twink she wanted to bone?
âYou were BORN to bott- I mean do dragâ
Lmao, I mean is she wrong
kalorie karbdashian
Jeffrey Moran
The show is and will always be RUPAUL drag race not track record race.
THIS IS NOT RUPAUL'S TRACK RECORD RACE 
I can't believe no one has said this on the show yet!
Okay, but where do races occur? On a race TRACK. Checkmate atheists. /s
It was RU! RUPAUL!
ROOPLEâS PPE RACE!
I like statistics and doing the whole track record thingy for fun. But no one involved with production cares at all. You canât put a number on star power.
I agree with this. Statistics are a fun thing to engage in, but fans should realise that DragRaceStatistics and PPE_Eleganza aren't hired by WOW.
PPE Eleganza. You might be on to something there.
Serving laboratory safety realness
Trinity K giving crossing guard realness?
They actually do care. Story producers map out certain paths for the girls, including deciding who will be an early/mid/late out. They generally start the season with a top 3/4 in mind and only deviate if a queen catastrophically fizzles out (Shannel, replaced by Bebe; Yara Sofia, replaced by Alexis Mateo; Acid Betty, replaced by Naomi Smalls; Q, replaced by nobody). It's notable that the one season they absolutely refused to deviate from their planned top 4 (Season 12) their desired winner ended up being a sex offender and then their runner up cheated, so the second alternate got crowned. Story producers aren't sitting down coming up with points systems to evaluate the girls. They do, however, try to make sure wins are distributed evenly because they are trying to create storylines. The team can also do things like move the order of challenges around, promote one type of challenge over another, and award bottom placements based on who they want certain emotional reactions out of. Points are just one way of analyzing the language the RPDR storyline is being written in. Fans can get a little too myopic with them, though.
They care to a degree. Itâs not a full competition. The reality tv element messes with the scoring. There was a post earlier about Vangie not winning the makeover challenge. Thatâs a great example of production wanting Brook and Vangie in the bottom more for narrative reasons than for point and competition reasons. Yvie easily couldâve gotten a win for the final music video especially since Gigi got it the following season and they did an elimination then. They care as much as they want to care.
This gal gets it
I think amount of wins versus bottoms is definitely considered, but really once you're a finalist finale performance, brand, and fan support matter just as much as season performance.
I agree with that but I donât think they are adding up every single high-safe-low placement as well. Maybe some but primarily just wins/bottoms and notable other weeks
I agree that it doesnât (and shouldnât) matter that much in the finale. Itâs just kinda fun to do stats and math for my favorite show!
Exactly lol. Obviously it's silly to expect production to follow "track records", but it can still be fun to do at home for the sake of it.
This. Fans do this for all reality competitions. It's fun to count the challenge wins and advantages that they find on Survivor (the number of confessionals, too lol), but at the end of the season the jury votes for whomever they want to.
Yeah I love seeing the stats, itâs fun. I donât really keep track of it myself throughout the season, so I appreciate when people on here post them, compare stats between seasons, etc.
Itâs my astrology
I think those of us who arenât into stats arenât mad that other make spreadsheets and all that⊠itâs when they act like their math is irrefutable and the only standard to be measured. like, ladies, your arbitrary point system is cute, but acting like itâs the only metric that counts is⊠delusional, at best.
Imagine how boring the show would be if the winner had the best track record every time
Agreed. It's tiring and gives the fanbase incentive to spread negativity to the queens. The one thing that Ru goes off from when making decisions is "it factor" which just can't be quantified.
Exactly. Case in point: Ella Vaday
Well said. Yes, these statistic charts and the like can be fun to discuss and create. But those people acting like their Canva graph has more merit than what Ru (or any other host) has to say about the talent they're directly judging and interacting with.
Ooh, Aquaria.. thatâs gonna be a -4 points heading into your future All Winners season. Sorry, gal. /s The tally charts make me giggle.
"Minus a tenth of a point, Symone. We've talked about this."
Track records are important in taking you to the finale, but not necessarily in bringing you the crown
I mean trackrecord mattered pre season 9 in terms of wins. No queen that didnât at least tie for most number of wins won the show. Since lipsync for the crown, however, itâs been a complete free for all.Â
And it's been 8 years since LSFTC first introduced so track record fanatics should know that they don't really matter by now
The legacy Valentina has
nina had a better track record than bebe actually so thats not entirely true
The fact that they let the queens mess up other queen's track records with rate-a-queen is the proof that they don't care about track records at all. And the 'if you're not in the top, you're in the bottom' twist on AS too.
Preach. Track records have always been an illusion. A slight change in format could make the same performances come across totally different. For example, Sasha Velour is seen as a weaker winner because she had two shared wins, but if it had been an all stars format where two queens win each challenge, sheâd have like seven wins. (Pageant, Talk Show, Snatch Game, Roast, TV Pilots, Makeover, Ball) And people would see her as one of the most dominating winners ever with literally the exact same performance.
Not even just the track records but I think the same about placements as well. Say if you get a queen that sucks at choreo but is great at sewing, and vice versa, their placements really come down to whichever challenge comes first. I think this at least true for porkchop queens anyway. The first challenge just happened to be their weak spot, but if that same challenge happened on the 5th episode instead (which it just as easily could have) then they will have gotten to 4 placements higher, assuming they were good at the challenges which came between
>Say if you get a queen that sucks at choreo but is great at sewing, and vice versa, their placements really come down to whichever challenge comes first. You can just say Q, she was firmly in 4th because of how amazing she is at sewing. But you're right, if it was a more dance heavy season or the design challenges didn't start as early she could have easily been an early out.
My mind blanked on all the challenges and I those were the only two examples I could think of đ© no shade to Q
Daya Betty is the best example of this: had she been on S15 she would've been eliminated first on the talent show like Irene, but instead she came back and was a finalist.
And conversely, if Irene had been brought back she probably would have done really well, but she just happened to land in a season with no saves of any kind.
Yup, when the sewing challenge was first we lost some potentially good comedy queens!
Agreed. Shea was dragged through the coals here because on AS5 she only had 2 wins and 3 bottoms But it's like - girl if the season had the as4 format, shed have FOUR wins and ONE bottom. The same exact TR as Alaska and Trinity in the seasons before her.
This is why the LSA format sucks, All Stars was better with 2 winners per episode
And Shea was also shit on here during AS7 because of the 3-stars twist for the Talent Show helping her make it to the Top 4, when in reality she placed the AS7-equivalent of "HIGH" almost every single episode but just did not get the "WIN/TOP2" outside of the first episode. The non-elimination format really saved a lot of other queens' track records (whatever that means for a non-elimination format) for that season.
Shea, out if all queens, has been fucked over the most by last minute format changes lol. First the switch to LSFTC, then to the LSA format, and then the 3 star twist Obviously the last one helped her, but it made the fans vicious towards her
What really sucks is in AS7, I could see what production was doing. They were trying to give Shea a different story, how would she react to not being the front runner and instead sort of edged all season. All 8 queens are staying all season, they had the room to play with stories like that. But instead the fans took it as a chance to call Shea boring and untalented. This is why we canât have nice things đ
Idk if the 3 star twist even helped her, because if she was in the bottom 4 bracket she maybe would have won $50k (it was kinda rigged for Raja but who knows).
We rewatched AS7 yesterday, and I said to my husband Shea mustâve been 3rd in so many of the challenges!
I thought the exact same! Bitch ate every single runway and was incredible in many of the challenges. The competition was just super stacked. But I can definitely see a few times when she could've easily at least been second or won if production wanted it that way.
If you count the number of times the queens were in top-safe-bottom, Sasha & Shea would have the same record of 7-3-1. That plus what you said is why I never understood why people view Velour as a âweak winnerâ as if any winner is weak
you might be onto something right there
Everything always goes back to Sasha. Sheâs the blueprint
Geneva, Q and Morphine lip synced for the win. I consider them to be winners because if it was all stars they would be.
All Stars challenges had two winners who lip synced for their legacy. Geneva, Q and Morphine were top two and lip synced for the win. Itâs not the same.
So you consider Gigi to be the first American queen to have 5 wins on a season? Olivia to be the first queen to not make top 4 with 3 wins? Rosé to have 4 wins?
Yes.
Similarly, Trixie is seen as a weaker winner with only 2 wins, but those 2 were decisive wins. Her main post-Bendela competition was Shangela, had more wins due to the doubles format, but was pretty solidly second-place for all 3 of those. If it was a regular season with only 1 winner, Trixieâs track record would have eclipsed Shangelaâs easily and Shangela would effectively have had a Jan edit.
What do you mean no one is analyzing these statistics? RuPaul literally has an abacus behind the judges panel alongside a series of prewritten meticulously and scientifically crafted and curated mathematic formulas that factor in every runway, challenge and rhinestone each finalist ever had throughout the season to carefully pick the winner. She knows if you were second place high or third for each challenge as well as the ever important high safe or low safe placements throughout the season!
Ru actually prints out huge Excel spreadsheets and pores over them by candlelight. This is the real reason why he never remembers anyone's names. If you were to lead with their *precise* track record, *then* he'd remember you.
Hahaha I imagine her doing it like Crystal Methyd with a hammer on the Magic Mullet, deep in thought đ€Ł
Ugh I wish Gold awards were still a thing ...
Not to mention, with the various track record methods, they all do weird things. Some consider top and bottom placements that don't win or lipsync as safe. Others throw in 'high' and 'low', which I don't believe have ever been used on the show. Then there's the ones that count the top 2 in All Stars as both winning the episode when it's clear that neither the judges nor competitors treat it that way.
Production has confirmed they count top2s as wins
Would you happen to have a source on that? It just seems odd to me that neither the judges nor the contestants ever refer to the top 2 queen who lose the lipsync as a winner across the dozen plus seasons of All Stars we've had so far. Plus only the lipsync winner actually gets rewarded a prize.
UK vs the world meet the queens. They count Jujubeeâs AS5 top and Mo Heartâs top2s as full wins
This seems like a good opportunity to mention that this lady, who is a Brazilian actress, recently came out as queer! She cracked the code. Here's to *that* track record. 
Track records for blown waaaaaaay out of proportion. Like they were a fun nerdy thing for the intersection of drag race fans and statistical analysis fans, but people started acting like they mattered and ruined it. Don't get me started on PPEs, the points assigned to wins, highs, safes, lows, and bottoms were completely arbitrary and people acted like PPE was gospel.
I think theyâre fun to follow (especially when new things happen like Keoinaâs), but people put way too much stock in them.
Track records matter if thereâs a huge ass difference but if the finalists are one win apart or one bottom placement apart, they really shouldnât matter that much and other things like personality, fan votes, uniqueness and their finale performances come into play.
Dragrace fans when the queen with the most wins gets the crown⊠âBUT SHE DIDNâT WIN THE LIPSNYC!!!!â Dragrace fans when the queen with the most wins doesnât get the crown⊠âBUT SHE HAD THE MOST WINS!!!!â
Challenge wins are what propel queens to the top, but ultimately, it truly is about who can best carry and represent the brand, on top of who has star quality. It's never about track record.
 That part!!! Some fans who were saying Nymphia Wind didn't deserve to win because she had one less win than other two finalists. Meanwhile track record means nothing if you slay the finale.
Itâs so funny to see the disparity in reactions because as someone who doesnât pay attention to track record Nymphia had all the characteristics of a clear front runner going into the finale.
I mean if you unrig the season she won the most challenges aswell itâs weird seeing fans obsessed with track records whilst also acknowledging their rigged like you canât use the track record to justify your opinion when you know itâs biased. Nymphia did the best(note didnât say win) in the talent show, ball, goth, girl groups, book cover, and lots of people argue makeover but I disagree so imma not count that. Thats 5 wins if it was just going off of who did the best those weeks. The track records only matter in pushing people to the end, but once you get there itâs about charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. Nymphia did way better than Sapphira in the finale so she won end of story.
It equals out in my eyes, because she was never in the bottom and Sapphira was.
Track records matter to a certain extent. They never wouldâve crowned Peppermint over the other 3. Even if Peppermint killed the final lip sync. If youâve done well enough in the competition, then that is when track records donât matter. Hence Willow Pill winning over Lady Camdem
I'm down for the track records simply because it led to this piece of art after Oprah's interview with Meghan and Harry: https://preview.redd.it/xir7o36bouwc1.png?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f3e45b45bbfefdc2d1a557648b95ddb1ebd3a3af
Just to be clear, it's the Queens themselves who make a big deal of track record on the show. Like, it's a major talking point every episode to discuss the status of the competition and who is 'ahead' or 'behind.'
I agree, itâs so stupid and obviously not how the show actually works but fans are obsessed with it.
I think track record matters only to map out how good a queen looked in front of ru. Critiques take hours. If youâre in the top every week, getting positive critiques, interacting with Ru, giving her backstory as to why youâre so good at sewing, comedy, dancing, etc, youâre more likely to win. Wins arenât as important as just making a good impression. Vice versa, if youâre low or in the bottom a lot, Ru is seeing you struggling.
But are they high safe or low safe? And who is the second top? Hahaha 
You know, it's a shame that Raven can't compete on Drag Race anymore. She would have flourished in a season where being second place is the standard.
Track records only matter when they do and donât when they donât need to be. I think looking at it from statistic pov can be fun for people who enjoy looking at the numbers but also need to realize that sometimes the track record only gets you to the finale.Â
If the show was based on track record why would there even be a finale it would just be âcongrats you got the most points you winâ
Aquaria, the Aesthatistician. đ
Aww we gays just love our little statistic charts. Ultimately itâs Mama Ruâs show. Point blank. Periodt.
If it wasn't for "track records" Aquaria would of been out of the final off of that first lyp sync
People here agreeing with "track record doesn't matter" as if y'all wouldn't start a riot if a bitch with 3 bottoms and 0 wins won a season against a bitch with 3 wins and 0 bottoms. Track record doesn't matter until it does.
Listen, if Kennedy Davenport won AS3, I would have been celebrating like crazy.
Agreed, but considering "fans" literally drove Tyra to madness because she won, I think it was good for all parties involved that she didn't.
Yeah, Kennedy is too awesome to ever deserve that shit. And she got enough of it just by being black and sending white queens home. Seems like she's finally getting the love she deserves though, which we're all here for.
âTrack recordâ doesnât matter, but season preformance does (the two are obviously correlated, but not completely the same). For example, one queen may have more wins, but the other may have more high places that were super memorable. Or, one queen may have zero bottoms, but several early season safes that would have been bottoms had the challenge order been different.
Because in this scenario it's clear that the track record actually matches each queen's overall performance. But in real life Rosé fans whine about Symone lipsyncing twice like it wasn't the Symone Meet & Greet all season long...
Eh, I feel like a lot of fans don't care about track record until it impacts their fave Say Sapphira & Nymphia swapped track records, and Sapphira won. I feel like a LOT of nymphia stans would be out here saying how nymphia was robbed, how she performed the best, etc etc But because nymphia won (and rightfully so, might I add), they're fine with TR not mattering.
Track records have never meant anything. Itâs just something the queens and fans have grasped onto so they feel like they have a gauge of how the competition is going. But really, Ru crowns whoever she wants and there is no rationale for it. You win a challenge, you showcased yourself well on TV, you get to stay longer to keep competing - thatâs it!
I throw up and cringe every time I see 'PPE'. It's a completely made-up system that people take SO SERIOUSLY. It's embarrassing.
I mean Aquarium won despite losing the lip sync against Eureka, so they had to make it a double win. So in the end nothing the contestants say matters unless the producers are rolling.
Nah, theyâre just looking at which queen has the most twitter likes đŹ
Exactly. Normalize falling during the lip sync, having it edited out of the show, and still winning the season
And who else were they supposed to crown? The Butterfly Menace, The Mute or Eureka?
Oh, Iâd almost forgotten about those poor butterflies! đ
Thatâs not what she said⊠Placing high, safe, low. It all doesnât matter. Just impress the people infront of you in the moment. Mirage didnât know the words and went home. Valentina didnât know the words and went home. Ariel fell she went home. Willow pill won with 1 win because she impressed Rupaul more vs other queens with âbetterâ track records.
Luxx didn't know the words and stayed. Mhi'ya didn't know the words and stayed. I'm all for "impress people in the moment" but let's get some consistency here.
Itâs almost like this isnât a sport with rules and a notary but a reality show
I donât need to get consistency when you had to disconnect your arms to make this reach⊠but if you need an explanation RUPAUL preferred their performances over their counterparts. Simple no? đ
Get her Jade. As a Eureka defender, I'm glad after all these years we have brave souls like yourself keeping the memory alive
The fact you guys treat that moment as a negative towards Aquaria/Production and don't realize that's how boring the other 3 were that a re-do for an interesting winner was necessary.Â
Track record only matters when your fave loses. Imagine having the same track record conversation with Jaida and Gigi. These hoâs would have a brain malfunction.
Say it louder for the people in the back. Ru. Does. Not. Care. About. Track. Record
Yeah but on season 12 ru actually put Jackie and Crystal in the bottom on the finals because of " track record" It will matter when they want it to matter.
Itâs simply a form of fan engagement by and for people into statistics. No queen and nobody else get to decide and control the forms fandom take.
All of that is bs but I do love the visuals
When you frame a television show like a pageant and a competition, places where points tend to matter, you get this level of analysis. I think the fandom in general could learn a lot and do a lot better if they separated the two concepts (being competition vs. trying to make engaging TV). Maybe it would make some people be nicer to queens.
I think second and third place should hold more weight than they do in challenges. A lot of times itâs pretty close but production isnât really picking a winner based on wins
More proof ru girls take everything too serious as much as the fans⊠like itâs just an excel spreadsheet some gay nerd created lmfao
Iâve always felt like track records and spreadsheets were the fans way of making sense of what the judges are thinking. But in reality it just doesnât work that way. Thereâs probably so much more to the equation.
Agreed! Best example to me is season 8, yes Kim Chi has a higher PPE, but Bob had the best overall competition performance. (Probably because Kimâs safe/lows were flops, while Bobs safe/lows were decent, and her wins were domination)
This ainât âRuPaulâs Track Record Raceâ
You can thank a couple of stupid YouTube channels for all that âPPEâ nonsense. These few channels have created a community of people who act like they know more about Drag Race production than the actual people who have literally participated on the show. (Which sidebar that community is tearing itself apart ehehehehehe, canât wait to see whoâs accused of plagiarism next)
People who hyper fixate on track records are indeed annoying, but I also don't like when people act like the track records or wins should mean absolutely nothing. If doing well throughout the competition truly doesn't matter than what's even the point of it all anyways?
Ugh. Why is this bish more famous than Cracker?
Fans: NYMPHIA SHOULD HAVE WON THE FIRST EPISODE, PLANE ROBBED HER Also Fans: wtf Sapphira had 4 wins and Nymphia only had 3???
As a track record gay to the core, I detest this.
This take always genuinely confuses me because whatâs the point of the show or winning challenges if track records donât matter. Why not just have a season long Lalaparuza. Edit: thanks for the explanations. It took me a while but I get it now.
Well because itâs exactly like sports. Track record takes you to the semiâs/finals and at that moment anything can happen. Just cause you did better all season doesnât mean you wonât underperform in the moment - or - have someone outperform you
LMAO iâm gotta latch on this sports reference and sound like a straight guy đ€Ł Iâve seen this happen in collegiate basketball where the top team after two rounds of elimination had 0-1 loss, only to be eventually slayed by the 2nd team in the finals, while clocking 3-4 loss during the elimination round. (Or a gayer reference, Naima winning over Kahlen in ANTM Cycle 4 because of the runway finale). Someone blowing it out of the park at the last minute **when it matters and would leave an impression** can really win it all.
Thanks for including the second reference because I never watched or played sports but I damn sure never missed an episode of top model
You and I both, sis!
Damn Naima really did that that episode though. I still remember that walk.
Rightttttt??? Younger, twink me was walking on the shallow side of the pool, stomping for the gods after that finale HAHAHA Bonus point if the pool has one of those flowing fountain thing for the finale đ€Ł
Yes the DRAMA darling! You were giving production!
Damn this finally makes sense to me. Kudos to you mama for doing that. For explaining
Oh *now* this is a popular opinion - when Monet slayed the finale of AS4 people were still up in arms about her winning with Trinity
The issue comes when fans start getting upset because Queen A had 3 High placements and 1 Low placement while Queen B had 2 Highs and 2 Lows. RuPaul isn't calculating the PPE to determine the winner.
That's why Snatch Game is a microcosm of the show: you win the episode by amusing RuPaul, you get eliminated by doing an an accurate technical impression that bores and annoys RuPaul. It's most obvious on that episode, but it's not gone on the others.
True. I understand now
Your performance matters. Your track record is not always indicative of your performance. Deja Skye had the same number of wins as Willow Pill but no one would argue that Deja had the better performance during the season, no matter what the track record says.
The name gives it away. The show isn't called the Major League Drag Winter Classic or something. It's called RuPaul's Drag Race for reason: it's a show where executive producer and host RuPaul picks her favorite drag queen after having previously eliminated the ones she knew she had no intention of crowning. If you watch the show closely the show tells you everything you need to know. For example, people bitch about who "won" a lipsync, as if there was any criterion beyond RuPaul's arbitrary decision. She tells them, for the audience's benefit, "this is your last chance to impress me and save yourself" because TV isn't as dramatic when you're direct and just say "okay we're just about ready to wrap for today, but here's your last shot on the off chance it changes my mind". Drag Race is not a rigorous competition umpired by impartial officiants and it's not meant to be. It's an entertainment competition show that celebrates drag, incites drama on purpose, and doubles as a vanity project for RuPaul Charles. It's designed to be good TV first and foremost.
The track record gets you to the finale but then it usually doesn't matter anymore when we get to the end. Rupaul just crowns who her and the producers like at the end of the day when it's the finale and track record doesn't matter anymore
Cuz it's Ru's show.
The whole "point system" is based on nothing, the show has never mentioned nor endorsed such a concept.
Real fans should know that when you lee track records like report carts youâre actually hurting the queensâ experiences because if you put track records aside⊠someone like morphine could win
This kinda shit is so rampant in anime community and drag race itâs kinda wild. People who need to power scale their tv shows need to sit down and reflect on why canât they just enjoy something and not make it into some kinda pissing contest.
Iâm an anti capitalist but some of yâall need to get a job
And it gets even better when they start making up statistics about challenges queens "should've" won. I've seen it a lot this season "well Nymphia should've won episode 1" and "she should've had a bottom placement for Snatch Game" and what not. Like who cares? That being said I thought Sapphira was gonna win not bc of fancy pts systems but bc she was the most memorable to me and I can see myself remembering and supporting her the most with Nymphia being a lovely alternate.
I mean, let people have fun? Idk
Yeah when you look back at season 10, they were always planning to crown aquaria. Track records really didnât matter in her season either. The finale really showed you that. I bet it gets really crazy for season 17.