Spring has sprung! Since hanging up the stop flags and climbing harnesses in November for the long winter, we’ve had only one occasion to roll thanks to a lack of attendance, freezing temperatures, and various forms of uncooperative weather. We went from having to cancel rolls for sub-freezing temperatures to waking up Saturday and Sunday morning to sixty five degree weather, before dawn. Leave the coats at home, let’s roll some buggies!

The Safety Chair politely reminded the teams that starting their pass testing earlier rather than later was a good idea. Consequently, Sunday’s rolls could have made for excellent day time TV: You get a pass test, and YOU get a pass test! EVERYONE ATTEMPTS A PASS TEST! There were pass-tests all day today cumulating in 7 successful passes.

Buggy alumni were out timing this weekend trying to grab some empirical data for the imminent heat-selection. We were tweeting about the efforts, but some data is more impenetrable than others. Take care not to disturb the trip-wires too much during rolls, this data collection is for your benefit.

In Attendance 

Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery)

• RoboBuggyAtlas – Many teams have told us to expect new buggy builds before race-day; for most teams we haven’t seen hide nor hare of a new buggy yet…But RoboBuggyCIA brought  “Atlas” out to rolls this morning their metal frame buggy feels like a throwback to Singularity one of the first robots to participate in rolls.
• RoboBuggy – The RoboBuggy team seems to be getting pumped up for race-day with a full Hill 1 push off. Because light is not essential for these autonomous machines the RoboBuggy team snuck in 3 rolls before flaggers were even at their positions. One particularly exciting shove saw transistor crash into the sidewalk by the Westinghouse Memorial…and then un-crash itself remotely and continue its roll…at which point it crashed again into the bales at the cute. Hope everything is okay in there, maybe you guys should wait for EMS before pushing transistor back up the hill, everyone likes to be cared for now and again.
• CIApex –The CIApex collective rolled again this weekend with Equinox already flying around the course and rolling windows while giving hill 3 pushers a run for their money. Apex swapped off between Ember and Phoenix, while Equinox, Orca, Icarus and Tempest rolled consistently throughout Saturday. During their third roll on Sunday, Orca was leading out the roll order and spun in the chute. It did not impact the bales, and the following 2 CIA buggies were stopped by the flaggers. EMS and the Safety chair checked out the driver and cleared her to be pushed back up the hill without an extraction. The rest of the buggies were also pushed up without completing their roll, unfortunately on a team rolling 5 buggies if your first one crashes it can be very disruptive.
• Fringe – NB17! NB17!!! Fringe was the first to premiere their new buggy this year! NB17 made it’s way onto the course with the trademark grey-primer paint job that Bissa is still sporting after some body work earlier in the year. NB17 was missing the cardboard fairings that have become commonplace on previous years “NB’s” but it rolls fast and quiet just like we would expect from a Fringe Buggy. The pass-test attempts started Sunday, but it seemed Fringe underestimated the freeroll speed of some of their buggies as Boson failed to pass Bolt. Fringe kept NB17 home on Sunday, and instead spent the day passing buggies. Boson and Beacon both completed their pass tests while Bolt and Bissa racked up a couple more rolls. Despite a total of 4 buggies and drivers in attendance Fringe was never rolling more than 3 at a time.  
• PiKA – PiKA rolled Clíodhna on bags for the duration of rolls on Saturday, suggesting a new driver making an appearance less than a month before Raceday. It’s a bold move, Cotton, we’ll see how that works out for them. PiKA was also bringing some other fresh faces to buggy as one of their (presumably new) flaggers mistakenly throws a ‘stop flag’. That didn’t phase their drivers though, as they sped right through the stop flag to the chute. PiKA has kept the buggies rolling tight with almost no time between push offs. Their buggies were reaching very consistent speeds while maintaining a tight gap around the course. PiKA might be practicing for situations with close Hill 2 push offs, but there is no reason to be executing such dangerous maneuvers with a new driver on the course. The team made no pass test attempts beyond what had been done on Saturday.
• SAE – SAE was out this morning! Lucy was racking up clean and consistent rolls despite not being seen very much on the course this year their drivers have been keeping consistent. Also for all SAE’s lion painting experience nothing exciting is being done to Lucy’s decals.
• SDC -This just in: SDC rolled fast, mono-color buggies all Saturday! They have taken to waiting the absolute maximum time before dropping each one off of Hill 1 meaning that rolling just 4 buggies can take noticeably longer than the CIApex collective’s 5 buggies. They are screaming around the corner into the chute; many of them nearly performing a controlled drift as they give their Hill 3 pushers a run for their money. In a strange twist SDC tacked onto the end of  PiKA’s last roll to sneak in a Saturday pass-test, right as the day was coming to an end, their unfortunate flaggers receiving the news a little too late were sent running back to their positions as the buggies queued up to go.  
• SigEp -SigEp made a return to rolls with an old friend. Barracuda looking a bit grey with a new coat of paint, so it looks like Spirit won’t be the only org repainting for Raceday 2017. Kraken had a solid performance and we’re all awaiting the return of Hydra.
• SigNu – Bungarus Krait is back! We wonder what color wheels they are running under those flaps. Krait tends to roll really consistently until it gets up to previously untested speeds on Raceday and then anything can happen. SigNu snuck in 2 rolls on Saturday and then disappeared back into their house and did not emerge on Sunday morning. Hope to see you guys back again next week!
  
• Spirit –Spirit’s drivers have been taking a particularly wide line into the chute, just skirting the bales on many occasions. With so few rolls it seems like their drivers may still be acclimating to this tactic as they roll faster in anticipation of Raceday. During the first roll Saturday morning Inviscid sped through the chute clean and quiet only to be followed by Zuke which was forced to cut hard towards the center of the road to avoid hitting the outer bales. The buggy spun in the chute and came to a stop in the middle of the road without striking a bale. Flaggers were on point all weekend as they threw stop flags and brought the third spirit buggy to a halt. EMS cleared the unharmed driver for extraction and Zuke scratched for the remainder of the day. Sunday saw the reappearance of Zuke and the team made it through with no incidents

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Rolls Report Contributors:
Ben M.
Ethan G.
Natalie M.