After a rainout on Céilidh weekend, this past Sunday was designated as our official fantasy buggy showdown. 41 people entered our first ever fantasy buggy game to take their shot at the $250 “ticket to carnival” grand prize sponsored by NumberFire.com. Fringe and CIA timers helped out to collect times that could be shared publicly so we also got some of our best data so far of the season.
Jake Mohin (SigEp mechanic, ’10) outfoxed everyone else, taking home the grand prize with a total time of 550.2. He made the best of his inside info, picking SigEp as a backhill team while the rest of the top 5 picks had them for the freeroll. Jake adds,
“I knew our chairman was pushing pretty hard for our guys to make a strong showing in terms of pushing so I made a gamble and left us off the free rolls list to give us the #1 Back hills. In terms of roll number, I banked on 3rd free roll always being fastest. Pushers are usually slow on third first run from being sleepy, fast on their second push, and exhausted on their third.”
There were a number of surprises on the weekend that may have affected the results. KapSig and SN haven’t made it back out, so we only had 7 teams. Because it ended up happening after daylight savings time, most teams got 5 rolls, but we had restricted it to the first 3. For what it’s worth 14 of the top 20 overall times were in rolls 1-3. Picking the right Spirit roll was probably critical as Fuko wasn’t out, Haraka never finished a roll, and Seraph. I was surprised to see that the winning strategy was to pick most of the fastest teams for the downhill as I thought the spread on the backhills would be larger. I guess pushers were giving it their all across the board.
At 9AM this morning, bidding will commence in the 3rd annual Lead Truck Auction. Don’t show up fashionably late to the bidding this year as we’ve got only 36 hours (bidding closes at 9pm wednesday) to divvy up the rides because the heat selection was held later than it has been in recent years. For the uninitiated, bidders bid on the chance to ride in the lead truck for a specific heat. Winners get to ride with the head judge and other race officials with a view of at least the lead buggy around the entire course.
I hope the rolls report faithful weren’t too distraught today given the lack of rolls report following an exciting truck weekend. As you may remember, after truck weekend the large and well compensated BAA staffers spend the night producing an in depth and comprehensive report for our generous supporters: the Members-Only Raceday Preview. Lucky for you, there’s still time to become a member or renew your membership via our 
SAE had a gnarly wheel failure while entering the chute on Saturday. It looked familiar in many ways to the failures Spirit and CIA had and it ups the expectation that the road quality will inflict some casualties this raceday. SAE has their act together though, and they whipped up a spare in time for rolls on Sunday.
Fringe and CIA both lost rear hatches in the chute. Figure out those tape strategies before next week everyone! On a general note, chairmen, take a moment and remind everyone in your org how they can avoid DQing the team. Sounds simple right, but every year there are tons of DQs for stupid stuff. Don’t be in the stupid club next week.
SigEp had some cool looking transponders on their buggies. I’m guessing they were GPS or accelerometers of some sort. Barracuda was flying all weekend so I’m guessing the data looks good no matter which variables they were measuring.
Fans in the chute were fairly well entertained this weekend. Not to be lowbrow about it though, there was lots of speed on display and some thrilling driving. Both SDC and PiKA’s RD2011 are routinely drifting through the turn at full speed. PiKA was losing big chunks of rubber in the process but rolling out well. AEPi hit the inside curb after the hay bales in what looked like a visibility issue. SN’s Skua ended the semester of rolls with a distinctly squirrely entrance line and then a pretty quick spin that sent her into the bales tail first. SDC took the cake for most exciting incident without even stopping when Avarice swung out all the way outside and tapped the bales with her outside rear wheel with enough force to throw some hay in the air. The recovery was truly impressive though as she got back on track and managed to roll out a number of windows. Youtube of those three below.
Rolls weren’t to be this weekend, but the BAA had a good homecoming weekend anyhow.
Last night, a historic 2 hour conference call marked the peaceful transition of power from the founding committee of the Buggy Alumni Association to the 
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