An update on races 4/12/24 from Sweepstakes:
Finals are expected to take place Saturday, 4/13/24, starting at 7:30am.
An update on races 4/12/24 from Sweepstakes:
Finals are expected to take place Saturday, 4/13/24, starting at 7:30am.
Heat selection is finalized for Friday’s preliminary races, and the lead truck auction for Friday’s races is now live! Don’t miss your chance to have the best view on the course! The auction will close at 9PM on Thursday.
Please note that this auction is for Friday’s races. Regardless Friday’s weather, we will be hosting a live auction for Saturday’s races at Buggy Bash. We hope to see you there!
Editor’s Note: Compubookie’s predictions do not reflect the opinion of the BAA. Looking for more insight and analysis? You’ll find them in the 2024 Raceday Preview, which you can get with your membership!
Welcome, Buggyholics, to the first shot of your Raceday binge. I know you’re eager to pop open your CMU Borggy and gorge yourself on some real Raceday rotgut, but for now, you’re stuck with 1.5oz of my homebrewed bathtub buggy hooch. Like last year’s race results, it is absolutely not the real deal, but if you throw it back hard enough it tastes a little like a ‘96 vintage, with notes of Spirit and Pike at the top. But don’t expect the same flavor this year, as it’s unlikely that the majority of fast teams will be DQed again to hand trophies to whomever is left.
AEPi tried and failed to make it back onto the course after a 7-year hiatus, so we’ll have to wait another year for them to reclaim their title as the slowest men’s A team. The current holders of this dubious honor are none other than Fringe, whose technological regression is so bad, their new buggies can barely complete a pass test. Look for them to win some intramural sport, I guess.
Fringe’s best shot at a respectable finish left when SAE (formerly Frontier (formerly Fringe B (formerly SAE))) got the all-clear to roll on their own after a year in disguise to duck the fuzz. Last year, SAE nabbed their first trophy since 1992– but they were racing as Fringe B, and covered up by such a full scale Sweepstakes-led psyops campaign that you’d have a hard time proving they even existed. Next up: “there were never painted lions on Morewood Ave.” Even so, the USA-chanting brothers are poised to enter the top six again this year, thanks in part to Barbie’s quick emergency nose job.
SigEp is in a difficult spot this year, with delaminated, decaying buggies. Barracuda found retirement in the chute at finals last year, completing a backdoor full-org DQ that must have flushed SDC with schadenfreude. Given the dire straits the brothers are in, it’s a shock that they blew their entire budget on wheels. If the duct tape holds, those wheels will carry them to a top-five finish, but I’m not holding my breath. SigNu, with an impressive showing last year and a consistent presence at rolls, finally look as fast and organized as they did 15 years ago. Jaeger is not only quick, but also has rizz enough to pull, as they managed to field a women’s team last year too. Once again, they’ll be held back by their mediocre pushers, leaving their alumni to continue touting them as the fastest team on one very specific segment of the course.
The sisters of Delta Gamma are looking fast and serious. They’re supposedly still building a buggy, but it’s taking longer than expected. Word is they ran out of money since all the pink tools cost 10% more. Still, they’re rolling Insite better than Fringe ever did, well enough to earn a trophy or two this year.
While Apex was impressive last year, they’re now completely void of momentum. In the shop, they’ve resorted to rapid-prototype mini-buggies instead of a full size build. The problem is, they know nothing about what they’re doing. Instead of coming up with a fire name, they went and made an actual fire in their garage. Oops. On the hills, the loss of several quick pushers to other teams sets them back considerably. The whole organization is an experiment in renouncing institutional knowledge, just like Fringe was a decade ago. I had high hopes for them, but now that looks like nothing but a crock.
Speaking of orgs that are falling apart, last year’s winners* PiKA have staggered through the year, always one step away from catastrophe. They can’t even cape their own buggies, let alone figure out how to roll them safely, but the formula for speed is a perpetual feature of their house. Somehow, they’ll bumble their way to a respectable time and a top-3 finish. Spirit’s not going to hand them another victory, though.
In a show of compliance comparable to their D/s relationship with their alumni, Spirit took my advice about lane lines far too literally last year, spoiling the men’s race and making a permanent enemy of CIA. This year they’re still picking fights, proving that winning buggy does in fact make you a jerk. Even though 20-year-old Seraph is firmly in the “DG-loaner” tier of buggies, they’ll put up fast times similar to last year’s. Unfortunately for them, their men are always more likely to DQ than not, and their women will lose by about 10 seconds, with the one actually competitive women’s team back on the course. Expect to be disappointed by SRS.
CIA, with a flagrant display of hubris, have rebranded from yellow to gold. Their new buggy, Goldfinch, combines the most misguided design innovations from their previous three builds with a shell manufacturing process stolen from Apex, of all teams. No word yet on whether the pushbar drops too. Back in the fall, their ill-advised experiments stunk up an entire dorm so badly that they almost got epoxy use banned on campus entirely. Regardless, they’re still at the peak of the competition, and will finally earn a men’s win this year in a close race.
After a time out to give us all an interesting race for once, SDC is back on the course. Not to be outdone by CIA, they’ve chosen obnoxiousness over driver vision with new gold-tinted windscreens. Still on probation, they’ve been ingratiating themselves with Sweepstakes all year. It worked though, and they’re being allowed to enter a buggy into design competition that’s never even rolled. The buggies they are rolling are fast, even sans the superior wheels all the other teams got together and bought without them. They’ll win women’s effortlessly, but their lack of experience and aging tech will hold them back enough for CIA to remain on top in men’s.
And that, buggy fans, is your definitive look at Raceday 2024. You will be thrilled and chilled, so refill your drink– you’ll need it. I can’t wait to see this year’s races, but you’ll never see me.
Men’s:
Women’s:
All-Gender:
The Field
AEPi – You could have made your one alumnus fan proud
Apex – Your apex was lower than expected
CIA – You only lost because people wanted you to lose
DG – Too respectable for the stupid anchor joke. All that’s going down fast is their buggy
Fringe – Not frelevant
PiKA – You do, in fact, need to use the entire helmet.
SAE – A bunch of Kens who lost their mojo dojo casa house
SDC – A Guy Fieri flag doesn’t suddenly make you relatable
SigEp – Stick to Booth and Greek Sing, at least you don’t embarrass yourselves there
SigNu – Goodly wheels all pointed in the same direction can only get you so far
Spirit – Saying you hate your son because he’s too hot is a bad look
Robowobuggy – Has GPS, still can’t drive straight
Atlas – You’re still here?
Mother nature sent snow, flooding, freezing temperatures, and even an earthquake leading up to the weekend, but not even those could keep teams off the course for Truck Weekend. And what a weekend it was! Teams combined for 85 rolls on Saturday, and another 108(!) on Sunday. Even better, everyone qualified for Raceday! Because we’re busy getting ready for Raceday later this week, we don’t have a full Rolls Report for you here. But we did have volunteer timers on the course on both Saturday and Sunday, so if you want to see that data, as well as our Raceday predictions and other recap of the year and preview of the races, make sure that you’re a member so that you get our Raceday Preview.
But as this is the last Rolls Report of the year, I just wanted to give one last shout-out to everyone who helped out with these reports this year. You may be surprised to learn that I haven’t attended a single Rolls all year (it’s tough to attend when you live in California). So I mean this literally when I say that these Rolls Reports would not be possible without the help of all the alumni and students who provided information and photos this year. In particular, I want to thank alumni Rob Siemborski, Matt Gallabrese, Connor Hayes, Dan Becerra, Molly Browning, E. Forney, Meg Richards, Declan Kelly, Ben Matzke, Frank Li, and Sabrina Wang for their notes and photos throughout the year, and Rob, Matt, Connor, Molly, Guillermo Gomez, James Wong, Raymond Galeza, Ryan Davis, Natalie McGuier, and Shafeeq Sinnamohideen for their help timing buggies this weekend. I also want to give an extra special shout-out to the current students who took time on the weekends to send me updates, both from their teams as well as for Rolls generally – They not only ensured that everything was accurate (at least for their teams), but also provided a perspective that added way more depth to these Rolls Reports than we would have otherwise had. So thank you SO MUCH to Su Mae and Kaylie (PiKA), Lewis (SDC), Tiegan (Apex), Julia (CIA), and Delaynie (Robobuggy…and probably a bunch of other orgs too). My hope is that in future years, we get even more teams to fill us in with how they did each week, as we love to pass that information along to students and alumni who can’t make it to Rolls.
In the meantime, below is the chart for this weekend’s Rolls, as well as the links to both galleries. And now that Raceday is here, make sure you’re checking cmubuggy.org frequently, as you’ll be able to find all of our announcements, a schedule of events, links to the broadcasts, etc. here. If you’re a member, keep your eyes out for our Raceday Preview, coming out this week (with Truck Weekend details). We’ve also got our Lead Truck Auction starting soon. Plus, if you want to get yourself in the mood for Raceday, spend this week listening to Season 5 of Chute The Sh!t, as there are some great episodes (including wild tales from the 70s and 90s, a look at the origins of the cmuTV broadcast, and more modern takes with both the current SDC leadership and Sweepstakes Advisor Stacie Gardner). And lastly, if you are interested in being our Rolls Reporter next year, please reach out to us via Email, Discord, or even in person at Carnival!
Org | Saturday | Sunday |
Apex | Firefly, Scorch, Solaris | Firefly, Phoenix, Scorch, Solaris |
Atlas | —- | Monaco |
CIA | Equinox, Goldfinch, Kingfisher, Roadrunner | Emperor, Equinox, Goldfinch, Kingfisher |
DG | Insite | Insite |
Fringe | Baltic, Blueshift, Brimstone, NB2024 | Baltic, Blueshift, Burnout, NB2024 |
PiKA | Banshee, Raptor | Banshee, Raptor |
Robobuggy | NAND, Short Circuit | NAND, Short Circuit |
SAE | Barbie | Barbie |
SDC | Bane, Vice | Bane, Vice |
SigEp | Hydra, Kraken | Hydra, Kraken |
SigNu | Bungarus Krait, Jaeger | Bungarus Krait, Jaeger |
Spirit | Inviscid, Kingpin, Mapambazuko, Seraph | Kingpin, Mapambazuko, Seraph |
Photos: Saturday Gallery (upload); Sunday Gallery (upload)
Rolls Awards. Since it’s the last Rolls Report of the year, I figured I’d take this opportunity to give out a couple of “Rolls Report Awards”, honoring the best of the best this year.
Less than 1 week until raceday, which means that we at the BAA are busy preparing your Raceday Preview for RD 2024.
In order to make sure you recieve the 2024 Raceday Preview, as well as all other BAA communications in the leadup to raceday, we wanted to push a few gentle reminders:
Other things you can do to satisfy your Raceday prepper needs:
PITTSBURGH, PA – After a contentious, four-hour long debate at a Chairman’s meeting today, Sweepstakes Chair Ale Bonacini announced that “Raceday 2024” has officially been renamed to “Buggy Day 2024”. Raceday, the traditional name used to describe Carnegie Mellon’s Sweepstakes race held during CMU’s Spring Carnival festivities, had been in use since by students, staff, and alumni for several generations, with its first reported use in writing going back to 1965. Planning was well underway with the “Raceday 2024” branding for the upcoming April 12-13 event. But after a tense meeting and a 7-6 tiebreaking vote, the Chairpeople decided to buck that trend and set out on a new course.
The motion to rename the races to “Buggy Day” was initiated by Fringe. “We believe that Buggy would be better off by branding the bout between bitter rivals with the best alphabetical beginning, best it be bestowed the byname Buggy Day”, said Fringe Chair Winona Wang. The motion was quickly seconded by SigNu, whose representative stated that “our alumni have been way too involved, telling us about how much better things were in the old days. We need some independence, and what better way to do that then to wipe the slate clean and rebrand the race?” SigNu’s rep wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal by their vengeful alumni.
The discussion then turned a little more heated, as PiKA and SDC voiced their objections to the proposal. SDC Chair Matthew Garcia made a point that seemed to resonate with several teams, stating that “we already ordered our shirts that say ‘Raceday 2024’ and there’s not enough time to get a new design printed and shipped!” “We’ve been racing since 1921, and we’ve been calling it Raceday since 1921” said PiKA Chair Christian Lanuza. “It’s Raceday. That’s what it is. ‘Buggy Day’ sounds like something that a person who was attending their first Chairmen’s meeting ever would say!”
Teams seemed to fall into one of two camps, with newer teams favoring the name change and more established teams favoring tradition. As AEPi Chair Elijah Cohen put it, “the only reason we stopped doing Buggy was due to confusion – our brothers thought ‘Raceday’ was referring to the Mobot races, so we’ve been dominating that for several years. With the name ‘Buggy Day’, we’ll be back to racing buggies!”
After several hours of debate, Sweepstakes officially took a vote, with Fringe, SigNu, AEPi, Apex, and DG supporting the name change and Spirit, CIA, SigEp, PiKA, and SDC opposing. Teams spent another hour lobbying the remaining teams, and each side believed that they had crafted a convincing argument. When the votes were tallied however, more chaos ensued. The Spirit-led group pushing to keep the name Raceday had convinced SAE to side with them, but the Fringe-backed group pushing for the name “Buggy Day” had convinced newcomer Frontier. This left the vote deadlocked at 6, at which point Sweepstakes no choice but to leave the decision up to Sweepstakes Advisor Stacie Gardner, who ultimately decided to approve the name change. With her decisive vote, Stacie stated that “for years, people have been mocked, ridiculed, and slandered for mis-stating the name of the day when buggies race around CMU’s campus. Today, we put an end to buggy bullying. From now on, the day that buggies race will be known by the name that everyone expects it to be called – ‘Buggy Day’.”
The name change is set to go into effect today, April 1, 2024. Sweepstakes has already announced, however, that they are looking into voting irregularities involving SAE and Frontier, so stay tuned. Regardless, we at the BAA are here to keep you up to date on both this year’s Buggy Day activities and historical Buggy Day Results.
And…
Can you feel the excitement? — we’re about a month out from raceday!
If you’re going to be in town, we could certainly use your help. Volunteers are essential to making raceday happen, wether it is helping to staff the BAA table, assist with timing, or working as commentators. If you’ll be around we need your help to make raceday a success!
You can sign up to help with timing or tableing at https://cmubuggy.org/volunteer.
For those that dare to be a commentator, you’ll want https://cmubuggy.org/broadcast-volunteer.
See you at Carnival!
Raceday is just around the corner, and what better way to show your Buggy pride than be being prepared with your very own raceday shirt?
We have a great new design this year to show your excitement for the sport we all love. Don’t be the only spectator on the course without one!
Get yours now at https://cmubuggy.org/merch. Sale closes March 16 to ensure we can ship the first week of April.
Spring Freerolls are starting up again. Here’s the best ways you can stay informed about what is happening:
See you on the hills!
Tonight is your last chance to get your application in for a Spring 2024 Buggy Enhancement Grant! I will be online tonight if anyone has any last minute questions or issues getting their application in. As always, the easiest way to get in touch with any BAA Officer is through our Discord.
Submit your grant application here!
For more information about Buggy Enhancment Grants, including tips from the committee on how to strengthen your grant proposal, the actual text of previously approved grant applications, how to access shared resources funded by this program, and how you can support this program, please read All About Buggy Enhancement Grants!
The first committee review is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 5. Applicants should expect to receive the initial questions and feedback from the committee by Monday evening. Please respond to the committee’s questions by Sunday evening, Feb 11, at the latest. We expect the final review to be scheduled for Monday, Feb 12, with the final funding decisions to be sent out that evening.