As has become tradition, this will be our last full Rolls Report before Raceday. Next weekend we will have a summary report where a bulk of the goodies will be in the Raceday Preview. So be sure to renew your membership by next weekend so you can know everything that happened and get our analysis of what to expect during the races. In addition to the Raceday Preview, your membership will also grant you access to our Luncheon on Friday after the races where you’ll be able to meet and greet with alumni through the ages.
This weekend unfortunately had an other missed day with Saturday getting rained out through the morning. With that, teams have only had a total of 3 days of rolls this spring, and it is beginning to show. There were several stoppages through the morning as teams attempted to pick up speed while also working on getting their required pass-tests. Aside from the regular rolls, Robobuggy tested out their new shell and the crash test SURG ran their first, real-buggy experiment.
In Attendance (Qualified with at least one driver)
| Org | Saturday |
|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze |
| Apex | Ember, Phoenix |
| CIA | Equinox, Icarus, Impulse, Ascension |
| Fringe | NBXV, X1, Beacon |
| PhiDelt | Perun |
| PiKA | Banshee, Raptor |
| SAE | Lucy |
| SDC | Bane, Avarice, Malice |
| SigEp | Kraken, Barracuda, Pandora |
| SigNu | Bungarus Krait |
| Spirit | Inviscid, Mapambazuko, Seraph |
| Robo | Transistor, Singularity |
Observations (Sunday)
AEPi – Meaning it in the best possible way, AEPi had one of the most boring mornings of rolls this year. Given that many other teams had trouble after trouble, their steady increase in speed and consistent lines without losing grip places this organization toward the middle of the pack regardless of pusher strength. While they still have neither driver fully qualified, they are incredibly close and have at least attained a pass test for their new driver.
Apex – With one driver qualified in phoenix already, all effort was pushed to get Apex’s other two drivers qualified. Ember spent the day rolling with other orgs to gain more rolls, trying to help PhiDelt and others with their Pass Tests. All the extra rolls paid off and Apex is now only 2 rolls and 2 pass tests away from complete qualification. Given how many rolls she did with other orgs, its a little surprising that Ember wasn’t able to spend one of those completing a pass test.
CIA – As possibly one of the most surprising outcomes from the morning, CIA had some of the best roll-outs all morning, nipping at the heels of PiKA. With Ascension already qualified, focus was instead put on the new buggy and other, yet unqualified drivers. At this moment, all but Orca have their pass tests and no driver needs more than 2 rolls to qualify. Orca was oddly enough not seen this weekend, likely due to the Easter holiday. For the one roll Ascension took, she seemed to use the same bright green wheels that Equinox has been rolling on and managed similar roll-outs.
Fringe – In a move that we were not expecting, X1 seems to be rolling with the intent of being a raceday buggy. I guess it’ll be nice to actually see what kind of times it can put up. NBXV is still missing fairings and what temporary fairings they have put on are not staying on well at all. Despite a few attempts over the weekend, Fringe still has not succeeded in a pass test. While they are very close to qualifying a couple combos, they didn’t roll them at all this weekend choosing to instead roll some that are much further away.
PhiDelt – The white whale that was Perun is now blue. We’re not sure if KDR Okay’d this, but they are at least taking some amount of ownership to the buggy and making it really into a member of their new family. Over the weekend, PhiDelt managed to more than triple the number of rolls their driver had by rolling whenever and where ever possible. It seems like they may have forgotten to try and fit a pass test in there though as they are still missing that key component.
PiKA – While most teams are still working out how to get their rolls and pass tests in, PiKA has been busy preparing for the actual race at hand. Banshee is looking like the buggy to beat this year with better roll-outs than anyone else on the field. Raptor may be getting left behind a little bit though as she was making some repetitive rumbling noises as she rolls. Raptor also managed to lose both hatches through the chute early on in the morning. Banshee joins the ranks of the qualified, while Raptor is still missing a few rolls and a pass test.
SAE – Thankful to see them continuing to come out, SAE still has some crazy camber going on with Lucy and the whole shell seems to flex a bit as she runs over the chute pot-holes. Much like AEPi, they aren’t doing anything incredibly exciting, but that is still better than most other teams on the course. Even though the team hasn’t come out as often, they are still as close to qualification as most other organizations.
SDC – After weeks of spinning and crashing, SDC seemingly is only getting worse. Avarice spun after completing a pass test on her first roll and lost a wheel. Seeing the turned around buggy when she entered the chute, Bane spun right behind her in an attempt to avoid crashing. Avarice later returned to the course and proceeded to repeat her maneuver from the previous weekend going headlong into the inside bales and managing to complete no rolls. With pass-tests completed for the drivers who rolled over the weekend, SDC is in a reasonable place for potential exemptions, but this is no place that a competitive org, much less the defending champs, wants to be in.
SigEp – Managing to put down another solid day of rolls, SigEp is attempting to qualify 4 drivers in 3 buggies and has successfully completed pass tests for all. With those pass tests, Barracuda also earns her qualification leaving her teammates needing several more rolls each. SigEp has yet to show their speed and we here at the BAA are all biting our nails, waiting to see when they’ll finally decide to put on the good wheels and really practice for Raceday.
SigNu – Having chosen a tighter line than the rest of the field, SigNu finally learned what happens when you go fast around a tight corner. As their last roll of the day, Krait came barreling around the chute corner after having left the straight well before the last flagger and with little force on her rear wheel, swung her tail around coming to a neat parallel park against the bales. Krait needs only a little more than most, other drivers out there, but should still be very attainable come truck weekend.
Spirit – Now that they’ve settled on which drivers will be driving what, Spirit is all-steam ahead working on getting qualified. This weekend was particularly exciting for Spirit, with a confused stop flag, a near spin, and a burring into the bales. Late in the morning, a paused buggy by the stop sign caused the flaggers to throw stop flags even though Seraph was already well past the danger. Without knowing what was ahead of her, she stopped down by the side entrance to Phipps. Earlier, Zuke had made a very tight turn into the chute and spun nearly 90 degrees before miraculously correcting and straightening out again. Inviscid, not wanting to be left out of the “fun”, made a turn into the chute and attempted to control it to the point where she oversteered herself into the inside bales. Despite this excitement, Spirit is in nearly same qualification situation as CIA.
Robo – Skirting the whole human situation entirely, Robobuggy introduced their new shell to the course with a course walk this morning. Transitor is still missing a pushbar as they apparently had to choose between that or brakes. Singularity on the other hand took a very successful roll around the course before the human teams got going. We’re not sure how much of it was radio controlled vs autonomous, but it was no less impressive having seen where they started from.
Buggy Crash Test SURG
The SURG Crash Test Team managed another pre-rolls test, this time with a real buggy shell. Everything was in place, but the steering of the buggy was not locked in and it strayed from its path hitting the bales instead of the bare curb as planned. Regardless there should still be good data and footage to go over before their final testing next weekend. The buggy they used was a somewhat forgotten shell that SigEp had put together a few years ago that ended up a few inches too small for any driver to fit. The team will be presenting their data at Meeting of the Minds during finals week along with all the other SURG projects.
AUCTION IS ON!
Get excited people, The truck auction is back this year to give you yet another chance to see the course like very few others have. In addition to being back again, we are tying it to a specific project like it was originally designed for when we introduced the Jumbotrons all those years ago. This time we are working on providing the teams with their own, easy-to-use, extremely non-invasive trap timing system that they could use during rolls. A similar system was introduced a couple decades ago but never caught on. We have reached out to the guy behind the system and he is already working on putting together kits for teams.
We have also migrated our Auction to a pre-existing system to hopefully ease the process on all sides. The Auction is planned to start NEXT WEEK MONDAY as soon as we get Heat Selection info from sweepstakes. Keep an eye out for more information as we get closer to Raceday.
Now that we’re in the final stretch, expect more posts to be hitting this site with info and goodies about things that will be happening come the big day!
StirThePot says:
“SDC is in a reasonable place for potential exemptions”
Granting exemptions to a team that didn’t quite get enough rolls is fine. Granting them to a team that is likely to spin out infront of 2 other teams is downright dangerous.
Jerry says:
I’m tempted to agree here. Avarice has been rolling since 2010, under six different safety chairs and several drivers, and has consistently had issues with spinning and losing rear wheels, worse than any other SDC buggy, or arguably any other buggy rolling right now. I’m going to feel really uncomfortable when Avarice rolls on Raceday, going (possibly) even faster than it is now. If she loses control again, and the next buggy in the heat is too close behind to react, we could see a really bad collision. Right now, I would object to Avarice getting an exemption if it needed one to roll. Hopefully SDC can hold it together next weekend and prove us wrong. I just don’t get why SDC insists on rolling Avarice when they have several other buggies which could hypothetically take its place just fine on C-team.
TL/DR: SDC named the wrong buggy “Bane”.
bordick says:
I was thinking the same thing. Exemptions should be given to veteran teams with solid performance, or new teams that are trying to break into the event, whose issues likely won’t impact the competitors. From this season’s rolls, SDC will need to show that they can consistently, safely navigate the course when there are no distractions. Other buggies on the course could compromise their chute line and likely won’t make them better.
As much as I enjoy some chute carnage, the safety of the SDC drivers is at stake and that should drive any/all exemption discussions.
Grumpy old Pope says:
Agree. Somethings are not right in the state of SDC. Firstly: the axle design that has clearly demonstrated that it fails catastrophically at the slightest provocation needs a re-think. I would red flag that chit until it was changed and they could demo for me a before and after test that showed the old one failing and the new one not failing. (this is how product defects are handled in the real world). Look at what is failing and beef that sucker up. Secondly, something is up with their prep/driver loading/wheels. They have either lost the recipe or are pushing the limits on something to the point where what worked in the chute a few years ago, has become less effective. This is a problem given how fast they go and the quality of their recent push teams (i.e. they will likely be in front). This is a problem not unlike what got bikes banned back in the day. Repeatedly demonstrated stability issues. Exemption? F-no!
It is a tough place to be as a team, you want to win, you want to go fast and you want the drivers to have experience at speed. But, you also need to demonstrate that you can make the turn and do the pass test. One way to force that balance is to enforce the rules on pass tests and successful roll count.. This will result in more runs at slower speed and give the drivers a shot at the turn. It may force a rethink on how hard they prep , even of race day. (although restraint then is rare) Kudos btw to Spirit for having show considerable restraint in terms of prep /shove over the past few years as they have worked to sort out the chute turn/trike/xootr sized wheel equation). They still have not nailed it but at least you can see that they are actively trying to make the chute a priority over maximum speed.
Giving exemptions to front runners is an invitation for a mess on race day.
While I am at it,someone please talk to the zoo about their chute turn (hint: aim for the flag , turn gently when you get there). and get SAE to fix Lucy before that wheel leaves town for good. And. if your tape is not sticking, throw it away, clean the surfaces and get some better tape or stronger beer cartons.
Shafeeq says:
SDC just mystifies me. There are years when the look like they have everything figured out, and years where they … don’t.
If their axles were breaking, causing the buggy to crash, I’d say that is inadequate design. But they only seem to break when they are already getting sideways, and they can replace them quickly, so one could argue that it is the perfect “just good enough and no more” design. But why use the same thing for the C & D team, where it only causes extra work for no real advantage?
Malice was doing OK this weekend, and none of the spins were on rolls that were close to fast by SDC standards. All of them looked gradual enough that the drivers had plenty of opportunity to recover, and just didn’t take it. That reflects not on the drivers (who are doing what the team asks), but on how the team is instructing them. I suspect that is part of what has been “lost” at SDC in recent years. I felt the same about Spirit’s spins in the early part of their learning curve with small wheels.
Sam Swift says:
Specifically about SDC’s stubs failing routinely: I’m not sure it’s a safety or design failure. I don’t think they’ve lost a wheel in the last 5-8 years that came off before the spin was already terminal. That is, the wheels falling off isn’t a cause of the crash, it’s a result. Once you’re already in a spin, the wheels falling off scrubs speed in a hurry, and they usually hit pretty softly. My guess is that SDC has thought about it, and is capable of making stronger stubs and has decided not to.
I agree with everything else.
Grumpy old Pope says:
i would agree if it were always the case of spin then snap the axle. I am old and so I may not clearly recall things perfectly. I recall a few cases of the wheel coming adrift when the buggies were otherwise headed in the appropriate direction or in a position where the turn could have been saved (i.e. early in a slide). If my memory is right, then no, I am not buying that as being an ok design.
Grumpy old Pope says:
Also, i am not convinced that “wheel falling off” beats “wheel staying attached” in any safety assessment where there is more than 1 buggy involved. Is the sliding friction of the wheel on pavement more or less than the painted carbon fiber body and or axle stub? I suspect it is higher and thus more likely to help slow things down quickly. That aside, It is hard to find that generating a 2nd object for the following buggies to dodge is a safety improvement vs a single object to dodge. And clearly leaving an exposed axle stump/spear with potential to impale the following buggy is a really bad idea. It this is by design, it is a shitty design.
StirThePot says:
“From this season’s rolls, SDC will need to show that they can consistently, safely navigate the course when there are no distractions”
This season is over, SDC has shown they can’t. Give that buggy the axe and move on.
McCue says:
“We’re not sure if KDR Okay’d this”
We didn’t, but everyone I talked to is pretty okay with it. It’s not like it’s going to do anyone any more good as pearl white versus blue, so if painting it gives them a sense of ownership or makes rolls more fun, I’m all for it. Looks pretty good IMO.
To atone, there is a 100% chance of me barging into their house over carnival, drinking their beer, and giving unsolicited/questionable advice to whomever will tolerate me the longest. (That goes for Apex too, just in case they think they’re off the hook.)
Rachael says:
Apex wants to be bothered by you. Come bug us!
Shafeeq says:
If you spin out half the time, you can keep trying until you make the required number of rolls, but that doesn’t make you any less likely to spin out in front of 2 other teams…
PiKA seemed to be short of pushers, but their A driver is doing an impressive job – not often do you see a standard trike slip all wheels equally. It’ll be interesting to see how much extra speed they bring next weekend, but better odds they make it through it cleanly than most years.
I can only imagine that SigNu figures they’re going to have to pass someone, so they might as well drive the chute pass line every time. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to lead to a better race outcome than recently.
The transition between the new and old pavement in the chute is obvious for most teams – I don’t know if is the bump momentarily lifting the wheels, or because the old pavement is just less grippy.
bordick says:
Shafeeq, Not sure if you remember the old Pika trikes, but they all had the “Pika-Slide” and that slide is the reason that Estes has his playscape rubber matted with treated black rubber. The last Pika Trike to win (1990 Vengeance) had a nice 3 wheeled slide, but the driver had learned how to drive it. Kind of like Fast & Furious: Pittsburgh Drift.
My concern is that many of these orgs, including Pika, will likely try to go faster on raceday and not make that turn. This year’s victor may very well be the team that runs about 95%, but makes the turn. I’m predicting the winner to come in around 2:07.5 – 2:08.0. It could be a B team.
And I agree with the Pope, more objects on the course are bad. Keep your wheels on. I know where I’m gonna be on raceday (if I’m not in the booth, and it’s not looking good for that), I’ll be just down-course from the zoo with a catcher’s mitt when SDC rolls.
Carl says:
If I remember my history Vengeance only rolled that one year and the reason, as explained to me, was because the driver graduated. Tho my understanding was that it was more of a tiny buggy issue than a driving ability issue, but I think it was about that time that y’all moved to understeering reverse trikes, and saying ‘We built the buggy too small for anyone else to drive’ sounds like a much more ‘Pika’ explanation than ‘We think that reverse trikes are the future due to the ability to control the chute slide through understeer’.
the cook says:
that sounds a lot better than “we ripped off the Zoo and we have the small wheels to make it work better than they do”
DAConley says:
So this doesn’t spin out of control….Vengeance was an experiment turned into a raceday buggy far too late for comfort. She was also a disposable buggy, never envisioned to roll again. She was driven by an awesome driver in Darryn who made anything work! Renegade – one of the (2) built for ’91 – was an improvement on the concept but data showed a different direction was better. Both are currently living out their retirement, swapping stories, in Bordick’s garage.
Pika first rolled a ‘reverse trike’ in Fall ’90 with one of the most versitile buggies ever built – Breathless. We’re not afraid to say the beauty and performance of Jama certainly showed the way for all other orgs to follow. Not the first ‘reverse trike’ but the best execution to that point.
Times have changed…buggy has changed…miss the days when Zoo / Pika vied for technical leadership with ‘made inhouse “stuff” and there was intense competition between many organizations. Will Sweepstakes rise again to such levels with so many of the Fraternities either gone or shells of their former selves?
See you all in about a week.
bordick says:
While we were ripping off from the Zoo, we also built 2 more standard trikes after Vengeance: Lone Wolf and Cyclone. In my time as FOAD and chairman, I had a large fleet of standard (King Solomon, Predator, Desperado, Vengeance, Renegade, Cyclone & Lone Wolf) and reverse trikes (Maverick, Mach II, Mad Dog) to pull from and gather data. From that data, my pea-brain decided to go down the Mad Dog path.
Our small wheels would frequently slide through the chute turn on the standard trikes. I have lots of video of that. If your buggy has a tendency to slide through that turn, then stronger spindles may be required. But, hey, I’m no engineer, and what do I know anyway.
P.S. the buggies are in my basement.
Lemur says:
So, the first 3 wheeler that showed the potential of moving from 4 wheels to 3 was built by PKA in 81 (3 wheeler if you do not count the roller skate wheel on the front corner to deal with some huge chute flex). It was fast but spun on race day.
Gary Getz , no dunce, noticed that speed and made me, the Lemur, and won with it in 82. Thus the age of the 3 wheeler bagan. I happened to be a trike.
Many trikes followed, nothing with 4 wheels ever won again.
Then one day, that bitch, Jama showed what a reverse trike could do.
PKA, also no dunces, noticed and followed with Breathless
many reverse trikes followed
Methinks the account of who copied who in the last century is square between the Zoo and PKA.
bordick says:
What year was Jama born? Cuz Breathless never rolled past 1989.
Drivers saved my bacon so many times, I can’t count. Aimee Sealfon came through the chute turn in the spring in Renegade with only one handle bar on a standard trike, so she one handed the chute turn. We started to remove her from the buggy and she very sweetly and casually said “uh, this thing broke.” Indeed. Those girls all managed to essentially master a drift through the turn. That drift was one of my considerations for the reverse trike. I liked 2 wheels turning through the turn instead of just one. I guess that worked out ok.
DAConley says:
B’Less was born in ’84-’85 season. Drove the course initially as a 4-wheeler, then a 3-wheeler std trike. She only went down the course in the Fall ’90 a couple times as a ‘reverse’ trike configuration (experiment) to help build the foundation. Remember when organizations experimented with things! Ahhh, the good ‘ol days
Jerry says:
I’d argue experimentation is alive and well, at least in some ways. Like Pike’s small wheels, CIA’s big wheels, Fringe’s numerous wheels, and then all the experimentation with wheel composition that we don’t ever see. However, the more bold experiments (like my personal favorite, the dropping pushbar) have probably gone the way of the panaracer and the derby wheel. Some orgs, perhaps most notably CIA, still roll fleets of mixed forward/reverse trikes, and haven’t settled on a preferred polarity yet. But in its most essential form, the modern buggy hasn’t changed much since the advent of three wheelers and Quantum Leap’s record, and even less since the start of the Xootr era. Funny how teams seem to be building more but experimenting less.
McCue says:
This drives me so crazy. Experiments you can see are not the only (and certainly not the best) kind of experiments. Every so often there’s a large obvious leap in tech (composite/monocoque shells, 3 wheeled buggies, 2 wheeled buggies, reverse trikes, Panaracers, Xootrs, brightly colored wheels) but the overwhelming majority of useful experimentation isn’t visible — or is, at least, very hard to spot. If you equate visible, obvious changes with innovation, you really aren’t very good at buggy.
After you are able to build a reasonable buggy, the highest leverage changes you can make are in wheels (quality, not quantity) and pusher/driver recruitment. In terms of man-hours-per-seconds-dropped, everything else has rapidly decreasing marginal utility except perhaps things that increase reliability/durability, consistency of execution on raceday, and ease of building/maintenance.
Shafeeq says:
The visible leap often isn’t some brilliant new idea, but an old idea finally executed well, as pointed out above. Once you get past the obvious things, the benefits are small enough that it hard to tell “bad idea” from “good idea, badly executed.” On the other hand, when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t hurt you very much either. I suspect that there’s a good bit of such on-buggy “experimentation” going on that leaves teams churning in place year after year. Big leaps are scarce, but if the experimentation was useful, at least you’d have a steady churning in the right direction over time.
It seems like there was more visible & invisible progress in the 80s-90s than today, but maybe the sport is reaching the limits of what can be done with the resources available. Plus the number of players and closeness of competition was higher then, too.
“Build a buggy a year” as the secret to success cuts both ways. With modern, weight-is-everything, tightly packaged buggies, trying to change anything useful requires either a Frankensteinian solution, or a whole new buggy. So might as well build one to fix the problem you know you have. So the days of massively rearranging buggies is probably gone. But when you’re busy building buggies all the time, you have less time for thinking about what and how you can improve, and for working on the things other than the buggy that affect your performance.
Shafeeq says:
Bordick, I never got to see the Pika-Slide in action – even Mad Dog was on its way out by the time I started. That’s too bad, since at the time CIA were the only ones still running standard trikes on small wheels and were going nuts trying to understand what we were doing wrong that our drivers needed to get their drift on when nobody else did. I think we only ever managed to get to neutral for a few driver weight distributions, before we fell into the pit of large wheels, which solved all problems by being slow. Now that they’ve apparently climbed back out, it’ll be interesting to see what happens now that they have a decent standard & reverse trikes to choose from.
It’s amazing how the exceptional drivers find a way to get the job done despite the mechanic’s best attempts to take away visibility, replace their tires with banana peels, screw up handling, come up with contorted steering arrangements, or just about anything else short of a 2-wheeled buggy.
the cook says:
I’ve seen every Pika slide since 1983 and for the most part the slide was a standard rear wheel oversteer common to many standard trikes. Every once in a while a very talented driver could slide all 3 but that was usually due to very good counter-steering effort. The ability to slide the wheels probably had more to do with the rubber graining off than any particular balance to the buggy. Urethane won’t do that for the most part unless you do very nasty things to it.
Jama says:
Hey, I was ‘working” it, despite my big wheels