Posted on | by Natalie McGuier

This past weekend, Pittsburgh saw some more wintry weather. While snow wasn’t flying, a 20F morning on Saturday lead to cancelled Rolls. Fortunately the temperature on Sunday crept up above freezing and we were able to have Mini-Raceday! The tl;dr is that Spirit took fastest Freeroll, the PiKA women were the swiftest on the backhills, and SDC took both fastest men’s backhills and fastest overall time. The official Sweepstakes times are towards the end of the post along with timing data from the BAA’s own Shafeeq S.

In Attendance 

Org Sunday
Apex Firefly
CIA Emperor, Tempest
Fringe Blueshift, Bissa, Bolt, Boson
PhiDelt Argo
PiKA Banshee
SDC  Inferno, Malice, Vice, Avarice
SigEp  Beyonce, Barricuda, Kraken
Spirit  Inviscid, Zuke, King Pin, Menes

Observations (Sunday Gallery)

Despite being the fastest team on the course this weekend, SDC provided the only major incident. Immediately after her push-off, Avarice lost her wheel around the Westinghouse pond. The driver is reported to be fine and fortunately for SDC, this wasn’t their officially timed roll. Prior to the incident, Avarice and Vice were almost exactly matched for Chute speed on each of their rolls.

PhiDelt was back in action after not seeing them since the first weekend of Rolls. They rolled with SigEp to help both teams get more rolls. At one point during rolls the team of teams requested to be called “Selt”, but were refused – probably because that’s a terrible nickname. PhiDelt’s driver had a slight issue during one roll and had to come to stop by the transition flag because her helmet had slipped and occluded her vision. The problem was quickly solved and she rolled without incident for the rest of the day.

Fringe and Robobuggy has some technical issues this Sunday. Fringe was trying out some magnetic wheel covers on Blueshift that kept popping off through the Chute. Fortunately there isn’t a huge penalty for that during practice. During one of Transistor’s Rolls, she came to a complete stop just before the Chute turn and needed some humanoid assistance. Whatever the issue was caused the team to scratch for the rest of the day.

While CIA didn’t top out on Sweepstakes lists, Emperor has made a definite step forward in speed. This Sunday, her downhill time was just a hair slower than the best on Truck Weekend, but importantly her Rollout speed was about 5% above the rest of the pack. The Hill 3 pusher on that particular roll was thoroughly smoked. Given that Emperor’s driver is new, we can’t wait to see how she improves into the Spring.

Below are the official times from Sweepstakes. The Chairman would like me to remind our readers that while the committee did their best to insure accurate timing, there were limited in their manpower. Some errors might have occurred.

Team Gender Start Hill 3 Finish Freeroll Backhills Total
Apex Mens 1:35:25 1:36:40 1:37:49 0:01:15 0:01:09 0:02:24
CIA Mens 0:54:32 0:55:31 0:56:30 0:00:59 0:00:59 0:01:58
CIA Mens 1:37:20 1:38:20 1:39:18 0:01:00 0:00:58 0:01:58
CIA Mens 0:09:15 0:10:18 0:11:19 0:01:03 0:01:00 0:02:04
Fringe Mens 0:45:27 0:46:26 0:47:22 0:00:59 0:00:56 0:01:55
Fringe Mens 1:28:18 1:29:19 1:30:15 0:01:01 0:00:55 0:01:57
PiKA Mens 1:30:34 1:31:39 1:32:35 0:01:05 0:00:56 0:02:01
PiKA Mens 1:05:58 1:07:03 1:07:59 0:01:05 0:00:56 0:02:01
Robobuggy Mens 0:24:40 0:26:44 0:02:04
SDC Mens 1:17:09 1:18:08 0:00:59
SDC Mens 0:35:24 0:36:24 0:37:17 0:01:00 0:00:53 0:01:53
SigEp Mens 0:14:50 0:15:56 0:17:12 0:01:06 0:01:16 0:02:22
SPIRIT Mens 1:32:40 1:33:33 1:34:48 0:00:53 0:01:15 0:02:08
SPIRIT Mens 0:50:07 0:51:07 0:52:27 0:01:00 0:01:20 0:02:20
SPIRIT Mens 0:28:08 0:29:11 0:01:03

The following timing data is taken from video footage of the buggies. When an identifiable part of the buggy passes two landmarks, the timestamp is noted, allowing Shafeeq to calculate the speed of the buggy. This is the same method reported for Truck Weekend 2017, so the data are directly comparable. Our dedicated, data-gathering alumnus would like the teams to know that it’s exceedingly difficult to track dark-colored buggies for these measurements and if you would like more and better data, please add a strip of colored tape to your push bar.

Team Buggy Steps (mph) Jumbotron (mph) % Loss
Apex Firefly 26.2 21.6 17%
Apex Firefly 28 23.5 16%
Apex Firefly 27 22.9 15%
CIA Emperor 33.3 29.7 11%
CIA Emperor 36.4 32.1 12%
CIA Emperor 34.5 30.6 11%
CIA Tempest 33.6 29.7 12%
CIA Tempest 32.5 28.2 13%
Fringe Blueshift 35.9 30 17%
Fringe Blueshift 33.9 29.5 13%
Fringe Blueshift 36.1 29.7 18%
Fringe Bolt 26.2
Fringe Boson 32.9 28.4 14%
Fringe Boson 31.3 27.3 13%
Fringe Boson 33.3 28 16%
PiKA Banshee 24.3 19.7 19%
PiKA Banshee 28.2
SDC Avarice 28 24.6 12%
SDC Avarice 28.5 24.8 13%
SDC Inferno 30.3
SDC Inferno 35.5 30.6 14%
SDC Inferno 35.3 30.6 13%
SDC Malice 32.4 28.4 12%
SDC Malice 30.8 26.6 14%
SDC Malice 29.9 25.7 14%
SDC Vice 27.9 24.6 12%
SDC Vice 28.6 24.6 14%
SigEp Barracuda 25.1
SigEp Barracuda 30.4 25 18%
SigEp Beyonce 25.5 20.5 19%
SigEp Beyonce 25.5
SigEp Beyonce 27.5
SigEp Kraken 28.7 24.4 15%
SigEp Kraken 27.6 23.4 15%
SigEp Kraken 26.2
Spirit Black/Gold 35.7 30.3 15%
Spirit Inviscid 33.2 27.7 17%
Spirit Inviscid 32.4 28 14%
Spirit Primer 26.5 22.9 14%
Spirit Primer 26.9 23 14%
Sprit Zuke 35.1 27 23%
Sprit Zuke 33.6 27.5 18%

Below is a running total of buggy/driver roll counts. An asterisk in the following table indicates a new driver:

Team Buggy Driver Rolls To Date
AEPi Kamikaze Rachel* 0
Apex Firefly Sam 9
Bethany*  5
Ari* 1
Phoenix Ari* 3
Vicki* 8
Bethany* 2
CIA Orca Vicky 2
Tanvi* 6
Emperor Rachel* 22
Icarus Rishi* 7
Impulse Yushuan 2
Rachel* 3
Kevin* 3
Equinox Emily 16
Tempest Kady 26
Fringe Boson Helen 13
Blueshift Amy 14
Nina 8
Bissa Tishya* 11
Nina 8
Bolt Sarah* 13
PhiDelt Argo Adeline 2
PiKA Cliodhna Victoria 18
Banshee Victoria 2
Raptor Archana 1
SAE
SDC Inferno Annie 21
Kyoko 3
Malice Annie 3
Kyoko 18
Vice Elaine* 16
Avarice Amanda* 16
SigEp Beyonce Nazil 0
Haiwen* 11
Kraken Nazli 6
Haiwen* 2
Barricuda Sophie 7
Beccy* 8
SigNu Krait Claire* 0
Alana* 2
Spirit Seraph Rebecca 0
Sarah* 8
Lillie* 6
Zuke Diamond 18
Kingpin Rebecca* 17
Lillie* 0
Sarah* 1
Inviscid Beichen 15
Menes Sarah 3

—

Rolls Report Contributors:
Ben M.
Shafeeq S.
Natalie M.

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