Unlike last weekend, which was full of Scottish-themed events and Great Racing, this weekend was refreshingly low key. Rain and soggy forecasts thwarted Saturday’s rolls, but Sunday was quite dry and relatively pleasant weather for the seven teams out with buggies.
In Attendance
| Org | Sunday |
|---|---|
| Apex | Phoenix |
| CIA | Equinox, Ascension, Impulse |
| Fringe | X1, Balious, Beacon, Bissa |
| PiKA | Banshee |
| SDC | Havoc, Avarice, Malice, Vice |
| SigEp | Kraken, Pandora |
| Spirit | Inviscid, Seraph, Mapambazuko, Seraph |
| Robo | Transistor |
Observations (Sunday)
Apex – Apex had a very clean day of rolls with Phoenix cautiously making her way around the course for a total of 5 circuits. Although the buggy/driver combo was still rolling with 3 bags at the start of day, she finished the last roll of this weekend without any. Apex will likely be increasing their cruising speed next weekend.
CIA – CIA was out with another strong showing with 3 buggies making their way around the course. Equinox was again quite zippy through the chute making for some impressive roll outs on hill 3. Unlike last week, Ascension and Impulse were reaching similarly impressive points up Porter Hall. Now that all the buggies appear to be bagless, we can only expect the zippiness to increase.
Fringe – Always the strong, silent type, Fringe had another good weekend of rolls. While Balious was still sporting her cardboard fairings, she seemed to have no trouble taking the chute with considerable speed for fall rolls. In addition to Balious, X1 (a.k.a Rollerblade Buggy, Centipede Buggy, and WTF Buggy) was out this week rolling on 9 inline skate wheels (3 sets of 3). Speculation as to what Fringe may be up includes a new practice setup, experimentation, or a throwback to a time when Fringe was a little sillier and a little less competitive. One rumor even suggests an art project on wheels. Updates are sure to come.
PiKA – Out with just Banshee for a second week in a row, PiKA gave CIA a run for their money in fastest free-roll time (in a purely subjective sort of way). Of particular interest is how PiKA is handling the raised green bike lane paint near the first flag point at the top of the free roll. While most teams are simply skirting the paint as close as possible, PiKA has moved their flaggers to the opposite side of the street to have their buggy take an entirely different line. Given how early in the year it is and how fast Banshee usually traverses the free roll, it’s difficult to say how effective this approach is. As with all things buggy, we’ll simply have to wait and see. Unfortunately, this new flagging hasn’t helped their pushers at all as banshee made her way up the backhills on her last roll of the day with no pushers in sight. Luckily Spirit was there to save the day and push her the rest of the way.
SDC – Sending 4 buggies with each roll, SDC arguably had the strongest showing this Sunday. It’s difficult to find much to say about this team other than they had a very clean and quick day of rolls with only some very minimal chute fishtailing. Of mild interest is that all of the drivers took cleans lines leading to the inside of the chute, but then veered off toward the outer edge by the end of the chute. We can’t tell if these are old habits associated with crack-avoidance or if they too are trying something new. Unrelated to their lines, Vice had a near miss with what can only now be described as a very confused squirrel. We’re happy to report that both driver and squirrel exited the chute without incident.
SigEp – SigEp was out rolling again with Kraken and Pandora. We aren’t sure how many drivers cycled through the 2 buggies this week, but they were looking good and appear more confident with each successive roll. In other news, Pandora is still competing for the “most likely to get a excessive noise citation” superlative.
Spirit – Spirit again had some of the fastest moving buggies on the course, but also had a few minor incidents. About halfway through rolls, the driver of Inviscid, brushed up against the curb at the top of the free roll and came to a stop at her own volition. Although Sweepstakes was going to let her finish the roll, she opted against it. In the following roll Seraph appeared to hit a bump just before entering the chute and rolled sidelong into the outer hay bales. Although the driver was alright, we are unsure about the status of Seraph. It seemed to take quite a while to extract the driver, and the buggy/driver combo was moved to the sidewalk to allow rolls to continue. Zuke, who had come to a stop at the first flag, was walked to Hill 3 were the pushers got in a little extra practice. Although the crash in the chute was unfortunate, it was great to see both drivers handle it so well.- Robo – Transistor, Robobuggy’s newest build, was out this weekend continuing their work from last year still working toward a fully autonomas driver. After their immense improvement last year, we can’t wait to see what they are able to accomplish this year!
Balius says:
*Balius
jtr says:
Rumor has it that the inline skate buggy was an experiment in pothole-surfing. It’s rather superfluous now that the chute is paved.
mccue says:
The fundamental ridiculousness of X1 aside, the fact that the wheels are always matched ostensibly (definitely) at random is amazing to me. Like if you’re going to experiment, commit to it. You can literally order those wheels on Amazon, so the fact that they didn’t even match on raceday is the weirdest part of that buggy in my mind (which is a pretty high bar to clear).
The Guy says:
I always assumed they were experimenting with different durometers combinations
mccue says:
you would think they would maybe start with a control — all of the durometers being the same.
also let’s all play a game where everyone posts using their real name. not sure of the exact need for a nom de plume on an article about an october practice session of a niche undergraduate extracurricular.
Shafeeq says:
Some of those are a few years out of production, too. I suspect at some point in the past they’d bought one of everything to test, and to begin with just threw on what they had lying around. And then it became clear that buying a matched set wouldn’t improve their time enough to be worth the cost.
Switched says:
Inviscid and Zuke have been switched in this report.