After 3 weeks of no or singular days of rolls, we finally had a glorious full weekend of rolls. 11 teams, several bicyclists, and a few joggers made their way around the course over Saturday and Sunday. While the latter two weren’t exactly welcome, they didn’t impede too much in the grand scheme of things. However, a couple of the bicycles made it to the chute flaggers before anyone noticed. Active flaggers are, of course, looking the other way, but perhaps the non-active flaggers should keep an eye out for unwanted visitors. More than course-intruders, an excessive amount of leaves near the chute turn caused a significant delay in the roll order on Saturday. The first four teams to roll must have had negative things to say, because after the fourth team there was an all-hands-on-deck effort to clear the leaves from the turn. For 30 minutes rakes, brooms, blowers, feet, and stop flags were used to free the road of leaves. Annoyance of the leaves aside, the teammate was great to see.

In Attendance 

Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery)

• AEPi – Against the usual pattern, Kamikaze was out and rolling both Saturday and Sunday. The team continues to make reasonable progress on the course with relatively smooth chute turns and cleaner Hill 3 pick ups. The rumor mill has it that they are also progressing well in their build, and are currently working on the details of making their mold.
• Apex – Ember was rolling both days this weekend. It was a solid weekend for Apex with both the drivers having clean, ever-accelerating rolls. The team hammed it up a bit by attaching “acquired” balloons to Ember for at least one roll on Saturday. Anticipating that Ember would need some help before the chute, a pusher was ready to start pushing near the monument. Fortunately, Ember was moving fast enough to make the pusher unnecessary. Unfortunately for the pusher, the follow car driver wouldn’t let them back in the vehicle. Hilarity ensued.
• CIA – CIA continues to be one of the top three speedsters on the course – the other two being PiKA and SDC. All three teams appear to be taking their own version of the chute line, with CIA opting to take a slower, but tighter turn without any drift. This weekend, at least one CIA buggy appeared to be deliberately taking something very much like a “chute pass” line. Given last year’s white-knuckle races and CIA’s history of passes in or near the chute, this doesn’t seem like a terrible thing to practice. Regardless of the line, CIA fairly regularly nails the manhole cover at the beginning of the chute. The recent repaving of the roads much have really softened the blow as it doesn’t seem to be affecting their speed.
• Fringe – Fringe had a relatively exciting Saturday when their follow car quit functioning, and they had to scrap their first roll of the weekend.  In more buggy-related news, Fringe was again following in PiKA’s footsteps and trying the flag-on-the-opposite-side-of-the-road thing this weekend. While Fringe is moving slower than they were last year, it’s hard to tell if it’s this new pattern or other factors. One spectator has noted that all the Fringe buggies this semester have been oscillating slightly around the chute path they are trying to follow instead of taking a direct path. While this may have initially been chalked up to new drivers getting used to their buggies, it’s a little late in the semester for this explanation. It’s surprising given the consistency of the team from years past.
• PhiDelt – Making an appearance just on Saturday, Perun gained some more experience on the course. While she is still not moving very fast, the PhiDelt driver was exceptionally clean in how she navigating the course and chute turn. If she can pick up some speed, she’ll likely be quite competitive.
• PiKA – PiKA continues to be one of the fastest teams rolling. They also continue to flag on the opposite side of the road at the top of the freeroll. At the chute, PiKA continues to turn at speed and thus must execute a traditional PiKA-slide in the process. This scrubs a significant amount of speed, but seems to be the approach of choice for the organization. Much like CIA, PiKA’s chute line consistently crosses the manhole cover at the start of the chute, although it does not seem to affect the drivers.
• SDC – SDC had another fast day of rolls, but did not make it through the weekend without incident. In terms of speed, Malice had fairings both days of rolls and appears to be running with heated wheels – the effect is noticeable. Vice had a pretty significant crash on Sunday. The beginning of her chute turn looked ordinary, but must have run wide and interacted with the hay bales. The SDC buggies have been taking the chute at a rather extreme wide angle this entire semester, so it was perhaps a matter of time before such an accident occurred. Driver and buggy are both reported to be doing dine.
• SigEp – Both Kraken and Pandora were out Saturday and Sunday this weekend. This week, Pandora was audible from the backhills before she was even visible on the freeroll. For a few moments, we thought a motorcycle had snuck onto the course. SigEp provided some excitement on Saturday when a Krait pusher passed Pandora on Hill 4. Given how close the heats have been in recent Racedays, it’s always good to get more practice with backhill passes. The SigEp drivers seem to have made as much progress as they can with their current buggies, and rumor has it that they are champing at the bit for better and faster buggies.

• SigNu – Making another appearance at rolls, the elusive Krait. While the driver is rolling without bags, it’s hard to gauge the team’s progress with so few rolls. Hopefully we will see them out much more in the spring semester.
• Spirit – Spirit was rolling at near full capacity with 3 buggies rolling on Saturday and 4 on Sunday. As the semester progresses, the drivers are getting much more stable and consistent. While Saturday was a clean day for the org, Seraph had 2 near-identical half-spins on Sunday. Both occurred early in the turn in a similar fashion to a spin Seraph experienced earlier in the semester. This time, after the spin it did not appear that the driver tried to tighten the turn, and the spin didn’t cost much speed. As a consequence the buggy traveled backwards at a fair clip and backed into the hay bales before the gazebo. During the second spin, the driver avoided the hay bales entirely and came to a safe stop without collision.
• Robo – Robobuggy was out and rolling both days this weekend. While, she isn’t breaking any speed records, Transistor is smoothly navigating the course and clearly making progress as the semester continues. Members of the BAA recently learned that Robobuggy will continue to be remote control, while a different group is working on a self-driving buggy. The self-driving buggy team has yet to make an appearance at rolls and recently acquired the former CIA buggy, Quasar, to robotisize.

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Rolls Report Contributors:
Shafeeq
Ben