Their beginning time was 16.06 minutes.
Step-by-step explanation:
The track team is trying to reduce their time for a relay race.
First they reduce their time by 2.1 minutes, take it as [tex]t_{1}[/tex]. Then they are able to reduce that time by 10 minutes, take it as [tex]t_{2}[/tex]. Let ‘X’ be the time in minutes at the beginning.
Given that their final time is 3.96 minutes, then their beginning time can be calculated as below,
[tex]X-t_{1}-t_{2}=3.96 \text { minutes }[/tex]
[tex]X=3.96+t_{1}+t_{2}[/tex]
By substituting the values, we get
[tex]X=3.96+2.1+10=16.06 \text { minutes }[/tex]
Hence, their beginning time was 16.06 minutes.
