9 thoughts on “Timing Data: April 2”

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  mark estes says:

  April 6, 2017 at 5:31 pm

  Looks like spirit has built upon last year’s progress. Sort by either timing mark and they are the only other org to join scd in the top 6. Granated, PKA is not in this mix. But to be ahead of Fringe and CIA and not be spinning, is a goodly step forward.

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    mark estes says:

    April 6, 2017 at 8:15 pm

    Apparently, my hands only know the yoda version of SDC: SCD = Student Council of Dorms.

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  Ben says:

  April 6, 2017 at 11:11 pm

  It doesn’t really help without the speed behind it, but if CIA, Fringe and Apex can close the gap by a few mph, it could make for some interesting chute->Hill 3 action.

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  Shafeeq says:

  April 7, 2017 at 1:42 am

  Looking back to last fall’s mini-raceday, Fringe & CIA were getting into the high 35’s, so only a tiny bit behind Malice. CIA didn’t roll Equinox & Icarus (A & B in 2016) last weekend. Fringe may or may not have been going full prep, and SigEp is still ramping up. Add in PiKA and I expect the coming weekend to be a more representative field. Unfortunately I won’t be there to record it.

  Spirit has definitely made progress with speed downhill, and more so with handling it in the chute. While not in danger of spinning, they have better & worse turns, visibly and by the variation in exit speeds. Meanwhile SDC, especially Malice, have gotten their variability down, and that was their only weakness last year.

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    mark estes says:

    April 7, 2017 at 10:11 am

    tru dat. The prep level and quality of the hill 2 shove is a compound mystery. i am hopeful that other timing systems can fill in for your absence this weekend.

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    Barsham says:

    April 7, 2017 at 12:06 pm

    Any chance that we could get access to video connected with these times? I’d love to see some of the chute line differences in the speed losses (for example, Zuke’s 24% loss vs. the 17% loss), or to see if there’s a noticeable line difference (or something else) in why certain buggies lose more speed than others (like Tempest losing 10-14% vs. Barracuda losing 17-19%). I’d personally find that fascinating.

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    the cook says:

    April 8, 2017 at 10:42 am

    The top speeds form the fastest buggies have been essentially the same for 35 years. The big difference is that then, only maybe 5 buggies (from 2 or at most 3 orgs) would be within 5mph of the fastest, and many would be dramatically slower. Overall downhill times are about 2 seconds lower due to small wheels getting up to speed faster. PiKA was the first to exploit that advantage, rolling top speeds slightly slower than one other, but with total downhill time being very impressive if they kept the turn (and the wheels) together.

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    Shafeeq says:

    April 9, 2017 at 12:48 pm

    Straight up speed loss % may not be the fairest metric to compare – some speed change is inherent due to the elevation change between points. Cornering forces go up with the square of speed, so the same buggy, driven the same way, may lose more the faster it goes. So it may make sense that the lowest losses are from Tempest & Bolt going slower than those teams are capable of.

    I don’t have video of what the buggies we doing between time points. But in general, oddball high losses are visible as “things you don’t want your driver to do.” The ultimate being the PiKA-slide. Since there’s not a lot of differentiation in top speed, differences in freeroll time are dominated by how fast the hill 2 can get the buggy going and how much the driver can save between the chute & hill 3. Which does make consistent differences between teams/buggies/drivers interesting. Especially within SDC who run apparently identical buggies, and CIA who run very different buggies with equal wheels & drivers.

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      the cook says:

      April 9, 2017 at 4:05 pm

      the Gods of Speed mete out heavy punishment to those who cannot point the wheels in the same direction

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