Orgs decided that there would be no rolls on Sunday because of mid-semester break, and even Saturday was a minimal crew of the most dedicated folks (or maybe the folks least skilled at planning something fun for mid-semester break). SDC took the weekend off, and most teams had fewer buggies than normal except CIA whose 4 rolling buggies represented 25% of those on the course. The fall weather is starting to kick in as it was about 40 degrees out there, but we’re still getting lucky on the precipitation.
In Attendance (buggies listed newest to oldest)
| Org | Saturday |
|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze, Zephyrus |
| CIA | Freyja, Renaissance, Firebird, Quasar |
| Fringe | Borealis, Bedlam, Blizzard |
| PiKA | Nemesis, Brimstone |
| SigEp | Peregrine, Barracuda |
| Spirit | Fuko, Haraka |
Observations (Saturday gallery)
- Brimstone was the first buggy down the hill for the weekend, but it didn’t make it through the chute. I only caught the aftermath, but it looked like an understeer slide into the outer bales. The driver had a bit of a forehead bump from the impact but she didn’t seem to be shaken up by it at all. Brimstone’s long axles were contorted to their most extreme position suggesting a steering linkage might have broken in the impact.
Fringe’s Borealis ended up in the same part of the bales as their first buggy down the hill, but it was a more serious collision. Borealis came down hill going faster than pretty much anyone so far this semester and entered the chute well. About half way through the turn something discrete happened (as opposed to a dynamic instability) and the buggy veered to the left. She knocked two rows of bales well out of the way and smacked the curb at a pretty hard angle. The driver – Fringe’s senior – was in some pain as she was extracted which made it a tough scene. She was around later doing fine, and it turned out the primary injury was to her shoulders from being restrained by the harness in the crash. That’s obviously not good, but it does suggest the harness did its job keeping her in place in a pretty high speed crash. The buggy looked surprisingly intact with the exception of a cracked windshield.
AEPi’s Zephyrus made the news last week with a pushbar and handle made of 2x4s. At first glance it looked like they had modernized, but as the buggy rolled by it was clear that they had just painted the 2×4 black and replaced the handle with something properly cylindrical. Hey, if it works, it works I guess. I don’t think it can be the pushbar’s fault, but Zephyrus was also the slowest buggy on the course by a wide margin, topping 2 minutes on its freerolls. That’s going to be hard to make up on the back hills.
CIA’s Firebird had a flipcamera mounted on its port side again this week, and although it didn’t catch any more super cool up-close biker shots, it did contribute to some drama. Apparently someone at the top of the hill caught a glimpse of the strange part sticking out of the side of the Firebird and alerted sweepstakes that the axle was broken. The safety chair jumped in his car and ended up following CIA’s follow car through the chute at which point Quasar’s driver coincidentally had a visibility problem and decided to pull off the course over by Scaife. To the confused chute crowd it looked like the fastest safety chair response ever.
Spirit made it through the chute every time this weekend, but both buggies were right on the edge of oversteer spins until their drivers saved it. The powerslide approach does look super cool, so maybe I’ll stop complaining. The pictures at right were taken 1 second apart as the buggy slid through the turn.
Fringe was the fastest team on the course by a wide margin this weekend putting down a couple of the fastest times we’ve seen this semester with Bedlam leading the way.
McCue says:
Melissa Lee (who IMs me first thing every Monday morning and asks where the rolls report is, as if I know) poses the following question via IM: why are drivers crashing more?
I know it’s pretty anecdotal, but it seems like people in general are having a harder time making it through the chute.
I was strugging to come up with an answer. Maybe it’s completely anecdotal, maybe the drivers are worse, and maybe the increasing prevalence of chemicals in wheel technology is making things harder to drive (I never rolled on anything treated, so I don’t know the answer to this).
What does everyone think? Maybe there are stats on it?
ab says:
Thanks for the roll report. I love these things.
Regarding Mel’s question: I’d go with wheels. Either Spirit has some crazy-juiced wheels or the buggy/wheel combination is a bad design fit.
DeVos says:
I was thinking the same thing a couple of weeks ago and the most plausible reason that I came up with is a combination of teams experimenting a little more with wheels and the chute asphalt degrading.
We’ve seen quite a few new wheel compounds in the past couple of years which means that someone is almost certainly going to try out a suboptimal compound in the course of their experimentation. As teams push towards the limits of adhesion, smaller imperfections in the road or mistakes made by drivers have larger results.
Also, some of the potholes in the chute are gettting to be major problems. If I’m understanding SDC’s wheel troubles correctly, it seems that the holes are enough to cause wheel attachments to fail which would pretty quickly lead to crashes.
That the best explanation I could come up with. Anyone else have other ideas? Is there really more crashing or are we just imagining it-I don’t know?
lemuroid says:
AB,
I do not think spirit is the only source for the uptick in wrecks. While they clearly have some work to do, they seem to be improving and appear to have had a clean weekend.
I an with DeVos on this.
I suspect the road surface as a big part of the issue. In addition to bumps and potholes are part of the issue but there could be more dirt on the road that is typical. The burgh typically gets enough rain to make for a clean surface. Has it rained lately?
Other factors could include:
Movement towards lighter designs especially in the parts that hold the wheels in place and/or control the direction they are pointed. The rash of wheels falling off during rd2010 was out of control. The rash of wheel and axle issues so far, does not look good.
More people running a narrow(er) and soft(er) urethane wheel (narrower and softer than xootr anyway) leading to different laterial traction vs. the wheels buggy was designed for. I learned the hard way in 86 and 87 that a small change in tire characteristics can lead to a huge difference in stability.
Learning curve issues on the care and feeding of newer urethane based tires. ya can’t expect them to behave like xootrs because they are not going to age the same or react the same way to heat or solvent.
Easy speed: it is far easier to go fast with minimal effort today than it was for many a few years ago. Thus, more buggies spending more time at higher speeds and what could have been a spin turns into a wreck as the energy involved carries the buggy to the hay.
the cook says:
I think there are a few factors in the crash numbers
1. SDC has tried something foolish with axles – lose a wheel, crash
2. Spirit is rolling a lot, Spirit crashes a lot
3. Its the fall – lots of new drivers
4. Some excellent drivers have graduated. The crash frequency for fast delta trikes may return to the historical norm, that is, they crash a lot
I don’t buy the new wheel theory, if tires or chunks were flying without benefit of rims, then I would buy it
Alex says:
Some videos of the Borealis crash and then Blizzard coming through the chute afterward (not the best footage, but it’s something):
http://vimeo.com/15973435
http://vimeo.com/15973736
ab says:
Mark, I didn’t mean to disparage Spirit. What I meant is similar to what you described. The Spirit buggies were designed for Pneumatics and the small solids seem like they are causing them some headaches. I think it’s a wheel/buggy combo issue. Could make a great Red X project.
Shafeeq says:
The potholes make the margin for missing your line smaller than it used to be. It used to be that a driver had room to let the buggy run a little bit wide and get away with it safely – only she and the stopwatch would know. Doing that now puts her into the potholes and/or the 2nd row of bales, so her only choice is to turn harder to get back on line. Since you’re already close to the limit, cue up the oversteer & spins.
There was a similar rash of crashes when teams switched from pneumatics to Xootrs. Sweeping may as well be non-existent these days, and gravel doesn’t grip well.
The teams that show up every day are mostly the fast ones. The difference between their A & D buggies is less than it was in the past. Even experienced drivers aren’t perfect, and with lots of buggies at high speeds, a crash here & there shouldn’t be unexpected – its just that they will all be high-speed ones.
A bunch of non-top-tier teams have built or bought reverse trike buggies, along with the chance of steering failures that simply couldn’t happen in forward trikes.
If a team believes that the difference between 1st & 2nd place is the same as between 1st and a DNF, then trimming weight to the point that a pothole will break the wheels off is a valid approach. I just don’t see why they did that for the C team buggy too.
revo says:
While on the high end I don’t think this semester is particularly extreme. Though, like everyone else I don’t have numbers to back that up.
I don’t count any spin by Brimstone or Spirit as being anything specific to this year as neither have been stable at any recent point in time. So take those off the list. SDC has had one type of failure repeated (regardless of whether the wheels have been eaten by potholes or not that seems like it should be fairly easily solved since nobody else is losing wheels in a similar fashion). After that there have been a couple of Fringe/PiKA meetings in the hay.
What I think makes the number of incidents stand out is that it is the top teams crashing/spinning (not the non-top-tier teams building/buying reverse trikes that Shafeeq notes). There have been multiple years when Fringe & PiKA didn’t spin/crash during any freerolls. SDC, while appearing to be pushing the boundaries of spinning in the chute at times has similarly had low accident rates. Having all three with multiple incidents in one semester thus stands out.
Shafeeq says:
SDC would spin regularly when they were on pneumatics, then they got that sorted out. Then they spun regularly on Xootrs, then they got that sorted out. Now they lose wheels, presumably they’ll get that sorted out too.
PiKA does seem to have crash free years, but during those years, they’d have a few rolls that used up every inch of pavement – eventually their luck runs out and one of them ends up in the hay. If they average 1-2 crashes a year, some years will have zero and some will have more, I don’t think it’s a big deal.
Fringe, on the other hand, has been consistent year in and year out. From the limited amount I’ve seen, their driving looks a bit more scattered than I remember, which would make sense with new(er) drivers.
Anonymous says:
Anyone have the statistic on crashes per org with a new driver versus an experienced driver?
Shafeeq says:
From 1998-2009 (I haven’t paid enough attention to the last 12 months), CIA has 2 or 3 full speed crashes, all of the “if only the road were a foot wider” variety, and all from the most experienced driver at the time. In the same time, they’ve had 8-10 slow crashes, all with drivers in their first 5 times around the course. Nothing in between. For the mechanics, the high-speed ones were actually easier to repair.
TommyK says:
If Spirit is still rolling Pneu in front and Polys in back then no amount of rear axle manipulation will help them get their oversteer in check.
But, for the record, imo their axles are too far back for the optimal standard trike configuration. Compare to CIA and SDC rear axle location.