At the most recent Chairmen’s meeting, next year’s Sweepstakes committee was elected. Congratulations to the new committee!

Chair: Rebecca Dettmar (Fringe)
Ass. Chair: Jasmine Zeng (Spirit)
Safety Chair: Julia “Jazz” Liu (CIA)

The chairmen also voted on a number of rules changes, pending advisor approval. Some of them are simple improvements to wording, or updates to bring the rules up-to-date with current practices. Others are bigger changes to driver qualification requirements and disqualification penalties. We will post the fully updated rules document on our website as soon as it is available. For now, here’s a changelog for your perusal.

Rule Changes

Capes and Rolls

• Capes location clarified
• Robotic buggies added to language for capes and drops
• Drops location formalized as being on the road, rather than the sidewalk, in line with current practice
• New driver follow car observation ride requirement elaborated
• Fall carryover rolls increased slightly for drivers with a large number of fall rolls
• Veteran drivers may now complete their pass test for the year in the fall, after completing 8 rolls
• Drivers must now complete their spring rolls requirements across a minimum of two days, one of which must not be during truck weekend

Sweepstakes

• Added several appointed Sweepstakes roles to spread the workload— Finance, Assistant Safety, and Mechanical Safety
• Operations Chair added as an elected role
• MarComm renamed to Events & Broadcast Chair

Raceday

• Start line is now described in reference to buildings other than the late Skibo Gym
• King/Queen/Monarch of the Hill methodology and criteria formalized
• Number of teams in women’s finals increased to 10 to match current practice
• Reroll requirements updated to reflect current practices, specifically allowing rerolls when a driver stops due to a valid safety concern

DQs

The following infractions are now enforced with 6-second time penalties, rather than DQs:

• 5-second violations, where the buggy is at the line at the count of “5,” and any offenders are gone by “Ready”
• Lane violations of one full wheel, but not the full buggy
• False starts not deemed intentional or excessive (time penalty is 6 seconds, plus the amount of time early that the buggy started). Other entries in the heat may get a reroll.
• Transition violations of one foot but not both feet
• Pacing violations

Any other violations, including interference arising from any of the above violations, are still DQs, and many have been reworded to indicate this. In addition:

• Three time penalties on an entry in a heat result in a DQ.
• Time penalties are counted in finals seeding, but not future year seeding.
• Time penalties do not carry forward. They only affect the result of the heat in which they’re incurred.