I’m guessing a lot of people went to sleep thinking that rolls would be canceled Saturday morning, but Sweepstakes found a way to make it happen.  The light rain didn’t stop until around midnight, but the roads were only a little damp by 7am.  Orgs were required to bag buggies their first time through the roll order to keep speeds down to a safe level while things continued to dry.  Safety conscious Pioneers skipped their first 2 times in the roll order while CIA scratched for the entire day.  The slower speeds with the bags seemed to confuse some drivers, as buggies were consistently turning earlier and sharper than usual at the Chute flag during the early rolls.

Observations (check out the full gallery from Saturday here)

• PiKA builds Chimera the 2nd.  Why wouldn’t you want two of the buggy that you set the course record with?  Incremental change is almost too generous of a characterization for a buggy that (when painted) will be indistinguishable from last year’s model to almost everyone.  If you want to split hairs, it looks like the new buggy’s fairings are larger than Chimera’s, coming up right to (or even over) the windshield line.
  • With the realization that Spirit’s new buggy is actually just the return of Fuko, this bring us back up to 7 new buggies for the year.
• Beta finally made it out for the first time this year with Problem Child.  They got 4 rolls in and looked like they had their act together pretty well considering their extended hiatus from the sport.  The driver is taking a wide line from Transition Flag to Chute flag, but is smart enough not to turn back towards the Chute flag.
• cmuTV was out filming from a lead truck with two cameras, one hand-held and one on bed-mounted tripod.  SDC, KDR, and Fringe allowed the truck to lead their first buggy down the hill on various rolls throughout the day. They are collecting footage to air between heats for the raceday broadcast.
• KDR is back out after last week’s steering failure on the new buggy and a day off for GreekSing celebrations.   Polaris was rolling just fine this time out.
• Seraph spins yet again. Spirit’s Fuko seems to have transferred its curse to Seraph, which has spun on each of the three days since Fuko was brought out.  This week it spun quickly through 180 degrees, then continued rolling backwards towards Scaife.  The follow car followed slowly and for a moment I thought she might just continue in reverse or attempt another 180 with the e-brake.   It was allowed to re-roll later in the day with a bag.
• Fringe’s new buggy is back out with fairings complete but no paint yet.
• SDC has their new white poly-u on both their new buggy and psychosis now and skipped the fairings this week.  The whitewalls look sharp on the pair of dark toned buggies.  Envy lost its rear hatch in the chute.  Psychosis lost its left fairing last weekend.  Those loss of mass DQ’s will get ya, better watch out.
• AEPi brought Camo back out, and although I can’t understand the logic of that move since they now have two solid buggies from the post-war era, it rolled better than ever.  The only buggy rolling on soap box derby tires in years and years, it may have actually rolled to window 0 on saturday.  If not, it was really close.
• SigEp’s new Barracuda looks much better now that it’s primed, and was rolling pretty well.
• SigNu skipped the second of four days of rolls so far this spring.  They have usually been one of the more reliable orgs in terms of attendance.
• Extra barricades were added to the chute after last week’s car-on-the-course incident and it seemed like a pretty good solution (presumably together with more attentive folks manning the barricades and a cop with a better explanation of what he’s supposed to be doing over there at the other side of the bridge).

Times (as usual, ranked by the fastest roll per org):

• PiKA – Chimera
• Fringe – Bristol (+ 0.5 sec)
• SDC – Raceday09 (+2)
• Spirit – Fuko (+5)
• Pioneers – Chaos
• KDR – Perun
• PhiKap – Svengali
• SigEp – Barracuda
• AEPi – Camo
• Beta – Problem Child

In attendance (21 buggies from 10 Orgs):

• Beta – Problem Child
• PiKA – Zeus, Knightfall, Chimera, RD09
• KDR – Powder, Perun, Polaris
• SigEp – Barracuda
• SDC – Envy, Psychosis, RD09
• AEPi – Camo
• Fringe – Bristol, NB09
• Spirit – Haraka, Fuko, Seraph
• PhiKap – Schaudenfreude, Svengali
• Pioneers – Chaos

Rolls were cancelled Sunday to make way for some early morning spring thunderstorms.