The thread topic should actually be read as “The Shortest Distance Challenge”

Gumball competition is not about speed at all.

It all about keeping your travel distance to minimum while ensuring that you cover all the checkpoint. No standard route is defined.

In the last competition, Gumball Delhi held in March, while a few teams went in clockwise direction other team went in anti-clockwise circuit. AND surprisingly the team than won used figure of eight sort of route to cover all checkpoint.

Why?

One of the checkpoints was on the south bank of river Yamuna near Agra. The teams that dis clockwise landed up on the north bank to cross over the river using a “pontoon” bridge. So far so good. HOWEVER due to rains over past few days the water level rose cutting off the approach to pontoon as can be seen in the attached video.

Now the these teams had to take a detour back to cross over from a proper bridge. This added twelve kilometres to their distance!! The team which did it anti clock wise reached the checkpoint first and did not have to to track back any shortcut detour.

So luck and navigation plays an important role.