It’s hard to say whether buggy has been lucky or unlucky with regard to weather this year.  They’ve gotten rained out 5 times but to be rolling in mid-november with temperatures in the high 40’s / low 50’s is pretty darn nice.

In attendance

Mini-Raceday Results
(best finish per org, times are from the end of hill2 to the finish)

Observations (Saturday gallery)

• Is it a coincidence that SDC’s margin of victory over 2nd place Fringe this weekend was 3.76 seconds and last April it was 3.95? That’s pretty damn consistent, and it shows that both of these teams were giving it their all this weekend.
• If you figure about 25 seconds for hill 1-2 (which is about what the top teams have been doing in the last couple of years), SDC’s mini-raceday time of 1:45.36 is roughly equivalent to a full course 2:10.  Not too shabby at all.  I wish we had historical data on previous mini-racedays to see how that stacks up.  We will next year!
• SigEp and Spirit were both out running hard and having a good time doing it, and their times put them in dead heat.  I believe SigEp was the only org out doing full hill 1s.  It’s a pretty important hill, you’d think teams would want to practice it for more than a couple of weeks a year.  If only the start wasn’t so far away from everything else.
• Chimera lost a fairing cover, and Barracuda lost a rear hatch.  AEPi stopped on the course.  Pretty smooth considering people were trying to pick up the speeds a notch.
• AEPi had some pretty awesome “Goodyear” tires on Kamikaze in a humorous nod to tire development.  That fits your assumptions about their program right?  Just joking about wheel technology.  But wait, they also seemed to be actually experimenting with some different compounds.  Kamikaze had both blue and green compounds at different points in the day.  You should also note their mini-raceday time, right in the middle of the pack with SigNu, CIA, and just ahead of … PiKA.
• Pioneers is definitely still alive.  They had 6 or 7 folks out on Saturday and ran their whole show without their chairwoman / alumni Vincent who was flagging.
• As you can see above, only 5 teams made it out on Sunday.  Mini-raceday parties must be better these days than they used to be.  As a result some buggies got as many as 7 rolls.