This weekend we had some wet roads on Saturday morning and enough teams called it off on their own that Sweepstakes called it off completely. Fortunately, the weather held up on Sunday and rolls went on mostly without a hitch. Teams are definitely speeding up and veteran drivers are closing in on their desired lines. The newly paved road might look awesome, but the newly painted lines might be causing more of an issue than we might have been expecting. Fortunately, The entrance to the chute is still very much fixed up, and there should hopefully be a lot less spinning and crashing compared to last year.

In Attendance 

Observations (Sunday)

• AEPi – Still with Two drivers caped in Kamikaze, AEPi chooses to only roll one of them (or the rollcount doc wasn’t correctly updated). We’re not sure of the strategy behind this, maybe it’s a one then the next kinda thing, but we’ll just have to wait and see what they do unless they want to share in the comments. Oddly enough, even though the driver has several rolls at this point, they continue to roll her with at least 2 bags every roll. They could be working on lines, but those often change the faster you go.
• Apex – In a similar situation to AEPi, Apex has a couple drivers in Phoenix. Of course they’re planning building this year to even that out, but right now phoenix is all they’ve got to work with. The first rolls of the day went to their more experienced driver, but they switched over later to the new one. She had some trouble finding her lines again today. Her first attempt had her taking the turn to tight to start, re-correcting and managing to make it into the chute OK.  Her second roll was a bit better, though she still came in tight to the inside, tight enough that she hit the one manhole spot and popped way up in the air. Every roll shows a little improvement, but this new driver still has some room to grow before she sets any records.
• CIA – Out with their five buggies on Sunday, CIA is starting to show that they’ve got some new tricks up their sleeve. Most of their fleet is already up to speed with Freyja quickly settling in despite her late start this season. Then again, 5 buggies wasn’t the big surprise this weekend, Ascension was sporting some shiny new neon-green wheels that looked very Fringe-esque. With these they managed to rollout better than pretty much every other roll I’ve ever seen of hers. This could be the new bump they’ve needed to close the gap on Raceday. So far they’re handling the new speed well, but we’ll see if this makes a difference in control as they keep pushing the boundaries. Looks like we’ll need to be putting the speed traps up again this year so we know just how much they’ve actually gained.
• Fringe – Ironically similar to AEPi and Apex that were mentioned earlier, Fringe was also out with only Beacon and had two drivers sharing her. Though they had the same approach as Apex today, they avoided the bags altogether. Early on in the day, it seemed like Fringe was doing their normal, low-manpower thing where they bring out a few buggies but only run one at a time, but it was clear later that was not the case.
• PiKA – Not wanting to leave SDC alone in losing things this morning, Raptor managed to lose her top hatch right at the entrance to the chute leaving her open for all to see. She continued up the hill without any issue with the follow car picking up her hatch along the way. From the looks of it, PiKA uses magnets to hold her hatch on, though we also normally see tape there. The newly cold weather may have caught them off guard on the tape, but they figured it out for her next roll and kept the lid on the rest of the day.
• SDC – As if to continue the trend of first org of the day problems, Avarice took a spin and hit the bales losing a wheel along the way. She made it into the chute alright, but once she hit the old pavement of Frew street and the old potholes, that’s apparently when things broke down and the wheel went flying. Much to the surprise of the chute peanut gallery, the wheel sat there for several minutes before getting picked up. Despite the setback, SDC rolled well the rest of the day without any other incidents. It’s still to early to say who’s doing better than who, but it might be time to start paying attention to rollouts where we might get an idea on how the new road might be helping or hurting.
• SigEp – After her small incident last week, Mamba didn’t make it out to the course making us think there might be something a little more serious going on there. Hopefully everything’s alright and we can see her out again soon. For a group that only has a few buggies at the moment, and has been rising in the ranks, it would be a shame to lose a potential top level competitor. Fortunately, we know Barracuda can pick up a lot of the slack, but that’s a lot of pressure to put on a buggy that has been at CMU longer than all of the members.
• Spirit – This morning was one of the stranger ones for Spirit with a few stops, but no crashes or incidents with either Buggy. On her second roll, Kingpin II made it around the chute into hill three and then stopped dead. The pushers had all gathered around seemingly confused until it was clear that the sun was the issue. EMS made their way over and cleared them for extraction, fortunately they were able to move off the road and rolls barely missed a beat. Not a roll or two later, Seraph seemed to stop with the same problem, but this time it was clear the brakes were being applied as the back hatch popped up. On the same roll, something happened at the top of the hill and delayed the follow car, to which their only response apparently was to speed around the course and squealing tires through the chute to catch up. If Seraph hadn’t made it all the way into the chute, that kind of driving could have gone in a much worse way.
• Robo – Still working on their data collection, Robobuggy managed to make another remote controlled lap of the course before all the other teams started their rolls. With all this action going on in the early morning, we might have to start getting to the course earlier to catch the new morning regulars.

Thick Paint

Something that we’ve been noticing during rolls are the new lines drivers seem to be taking to avoid much of the new paint on the road. Early on, I didn’t expect them to make a huge difference, even though they are quite think, they shouldn’t be much worse than the old cracked pavement. This thinking clearly isn’t shared as every org seems to be taking the transition flag very wide around the corner towards the monument. Some orgs manage to cross cleanly into the bike lane while others don’t pull in as tight and sound like trains bouncing over each line. There’s not enough data yet to say one way or another, but it seems teams need to re-adjust a bit more this year than most.

Frew Street Paving

As something that was expected to happen over the summer, Frew street has yet to be paved and has still been causing teams some grief on the backhills. Apparently  there have been talks with the city about having this done later this year around November, or early next year possibly February. This would be a very welcome change, but with the Asphalt plants closing around the same time who knows what the outcome will be when we get there.