Their beginning time was 16.06 minutes.
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
. Then they are able to reduce that time by 10 minutes, take it as
. 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,


By substituting the values, we get

Hence, their beginning time was 16.06 minutes.