Saturday was called off for all the Halloween shenanigans leaving teams only with the extra long, daylight-savings-adjusted Sunday. Despite there only being 6 teams out, they managed to rack up a full 90 rolls around the course. After a smooth start to the morning, things got more hectic as teams scratched for a break in the madness causing a cascade of scratching as teams weren’t ready for the quick turn around.

In Attendance 

Observations (Sunday)

• Apex – After missing Sunday’s rolls last weekend, it seems Phoenix is fixed up and back in action. She missed last week’s rolls due to some possible delamination happening in the front of the buggy and they took the day off to inspect and repair as needed. It’s good timing too since Mini-Raceday is coming up soon and it would be a shame to miss out on a little friendly competition.
• CIA – Up until this point, CIA has somewhat impressively managed to avoid any major stoppages, but this weekend held both the first and second incidents of the year for the org. The first incident found impulse taking a very wide line in the chute, wide enough to the point where she landed in the outer bales. Apparently she was having some visibility issues and slowed herself down as best she could before what was described as a very light impact. Later in the morning, Ascension was found nearly spun around up by the transition flag. The driver braked harder than she intended after being given a stop flag. Icarus came around the corner behind her and was given no flag until a stop flag from the second flagger after she had passed the stopped Ascension. The first flagger was being shared between multiple organizations and had apparently thrown the stop flag incorrectly thinking it was the go flag. There was no major damage to the buggy and the driver was unfazed and was allowed to drive later in the day.
• Fringe – With both Bissa and Bolt out on the course, Fringe was racing up a storm and having no trouble with the still unpaved Frew Street. Bolt is clearly sticking to her tiny wheels and we got a nice view at them without the fairing hatch covering them up. We haven’t yet seen any significant data on whether these are working better or worse than the larger wheels on their other buggies, but at the very least they are getting them around the course just fine. They were recording several of their rolls with a GoPro atop Bissa, though a few times it seemed to be looking somewhere else.
• PiKA – Deciding to take a break in the middle of the morning to recoup, Pike also had a quite smooth morning. On their first roll of the morning, Banshee and Raptor were pushed off in a fairly short amount of time and clearly passed each other as they came up to the finish line in reverse order. Only on their last roll did Banshee stop very safely just before the chute flag. She was moved off to the side of the road where they discovered she was having some visibility issues when she chose to stop. With so much time in the morning, PiKA took the opportunity to try some Hill 1’s which gave everyone a little more time to set up between their rolls.
• SDC – Pushing it hard as always, SDC was showing what they could do and looked like they had some pretty impressive speeds going around. Pushers were getting the starting line countdown for their hill 2’s as they were all given a full shove. Unfortunately it sounds like their hill 3 pushers didn’t always make it down in time and had to be caught by other teams. Vice was again found spun in the chute. Though she didn’t hit the bales, it is a little worrisome that they haven’t been able to correct this problem after so many weeks of rolls. Something else that we haven’t really touched on yet is the lack of a 4th buggy and driver. We saw Avarice on the course early on, but not since. It’s possible that they will introduce a 4th combination in the spring, but from the looks of it, they may be down a couple teams come raceday. While they will likely still have their strong A and B teams, we might be seeing a little less domination this year without the depth that is often indicative of their D team.
• Spirit – Putting last weekend’s harrowing accident behind them, Spirit was out again in high spirits and rolling unfazed. With the bales moved out from in front of the grate and now primarily guarded by a cone, hopefully no one else will have the same issue. While the buggy didn’t seem to sustain career ending damage, the driver will likely not be returning to the course until the spring when she will be fully healed of her injury.
• Robobuggy – Still making it out to the course this morning, Robobuggy was seen collecting more data but decided to not do a full run of the course and instead just kept to the early course walk. Hopefully this means that they are close to having enough data to attempt an actual autonomous run.

Course Happenings

After the craziness that was last weekend, there was a somewhat large change made to the course regarding the lone bale over the storm drain. The single bale has been replaced by a cone that is located a few feet up from the hole and there was also a second bale added right next to the first. Weirdly though, the bales are now on top of the curb in a place that seems like the least likely to do any good. If they are going to not put the bale on the road, they may as well just add them to all the bales that line the chute turn.