After years of neglect, the drop line has finally been paved. Sorry, it’s not Hill 1.
Stay tuned for to-the-minute updates on course paving this summer. Hoping for something a little more important next time…
Sweepstakes Committee 2010 elected
These kids aren’t just breaking course records like they’re nothing special, they’re also thinking one step ahead about running the show next year. Traditionally, the first sweepstakes meeting of the year is called by the defending champion some time in September. After a couple of meetings a committe is elected and they rush to figure out what they’re doing to get rolls started as soon as they can.
This year, they decided to do the electing now so that the committee has the entire off-season to get a feel for things and set their agenda. It makes an 8 month job into a 12 month job, but at the wages they’re getting paid, sweepstakes can afford it.
Without further ado, the raceday 2010 sweepstakes committe is:
- Chair: Jess Thurston (Fringe, graduating, starting Masters)
- Assistant: Chris Shellhamer (Pika, will be sophomore ChemE)
- Safety: JB Feldman (AEPi, will be senior CS)
Good luck to them, and good work outgoing committee. Thanks to Vincent for hooking me up with the official info.
SDC sweeps, smashes records
Sweepstakes 2009: Yes, there is a person in there – and Holy &!^@ did she go fast!
It was another record breaking year, something no one might have expected after last year’s impossibly fast times. The men’s and women’s course records (2:04.35 and 2:28.84) were shattered after only a year, replaced by SDC’s new times of 2:03.3 and 2:25.6.
Members of the Buggy Alumni Association will receive a special post-raceday wrapup email in the coming week. It will feature more facts and figures, observations from the hills, and a team by team analysis of performance this year. You can join today by visiting cmubuggy.org/Join. Until then, here are some highlights:
* It is the lowest First Day place for PiKA since 1969…they did get 3rd this year and in 2004 they were 4th after day 1…also 3rd in 1997 and 1989…the last time PiKA had a lower final place was 1985 due to the dqs. (thanks Revo)
* Fringe put on a great 40th anniversary show for their returning alumni, just edging out PiKA to take 2nd on the last roll of the day for a new team record 2:07.25.
* SigEp men’s A sliced 6 seconds off last year’s time, coming in with a 2:08:61, a time that would have won four of the last ten Sweepstakes. The SigEp women’s team got a trophy for the first time with third place.
* AEPi posted an 11th place finish, their best ever, separated from a spot in the finals by only 3 seconds.
* Beta was DQ’d and then banned from participating in buggy until fall of 2010 due to fire safety violations (5 gallons of flammable fluid were found in the Beta truck.)
* CIA produced their first new buggy in nine five years, named Renaissance. It’s a radical departure from their traditional style of building, yet they still somehow made it look like a CIA buggy – including a windshield that is several inches longer on the left side than it is on the right, for “passing on the inside.”
* Due to a change in the conditions for winning the Spirit of Buggy award, exhibition heats were one of the highlights of Saturday morning. Anyone who went back to the old school practice of switching wheels at the bottom of hill 3 would be considered for the award, so Pioneers, KDR, AEPi, and CIA all made the switch after the chute. AEPi had an entire F1-style pit crew working on the buggy, complete with a gas can, a foot massage, and a lollipop-sign guy. Pioneers won the award on their driver’s performance – she actually got out of the buggy, pulled the replacement wheel out of the buggy, replaced it herself, and then got back in to drove the rest of the race.
* Despite winning the Spirit of Buggy award, this might be Pioneers’ last year. There are currently no members of Pioneers planning on returning next year. There is some word on the street that KapSig might be in line to race their buggies.
For more highlights from the weekend, check out the Tartan’s Sweepstakes coverage. We’ll excuse the minor inaccuracies since they were awfully quick to go to press with this story. Also, it’s pretty obvious the author took buggy descriptions from our Raceday Guide that has unpainted buggies from before Truck Weekend. We’ll take that as a compliment!
Also view a video of AEPi’s pit stop.
Heats are selected and the Auction is on!
The heat selection meeting happened tonight, and we’ve got a raceday schedule to work with. There are 40 50 teams entering the race this year (18 Womens and 32 Men’s) which is down 9 from last year even though SAE and Beta are joining the fray this year. Maybe it’s the bad economy. up 1 from last year!
The heats being released also means that our Lead Truck Auction will be underway at 9am this morning. Get in on the bidding action early and tell all the other alumni (and current students) about this new opportunity.
The heats are: Continue reading
Next Rolls: March 21,22
It’s spring break, and the kids are in Acapulco so there were no rolls this weekend, and there will be none next weekend. Bad timing too, because it was 55F here at 7am yesterday. Would have been a nice one.
We’ll pick up with the pictures, reports and hopefully some timing on March 21.
First chairman’s meeting and rule changes
The sweepstakes chair Andrew Hundt sent out an announcement about the spring’s first sweepstakes meeting being held tonight, and he included a pretty hefty collection or proposed rule changes that will be discussed.
The 6 most pertinent changes are:
- Required mouthguards for drivers.
- Required double bales at all times.
- Language regarding treatment of the buggy during an accident.
- ‘Spin Test’ to evaluate brakes and wheels without moving a buggy.
- Follow Car Certification Program, needed for at least one person in any active follow car. (Similar to the required driver meetings)
- Edited some rules to be more concise, clearer, accurate, and shorter.
It sounds in general like sweepstakes is really putting some thought into how best to prevent and respond to the accidents that are serious enough to injure the driver. Can’t argue with that in general.
Having double bales for every day of rolls sounds like a lot of extra work. How about double bales in the high risk areas and fewer bales in those places where nobody every crashes (i.e. 100 yards past the apex on the outside of the turn)?
Check out the thread I started in the forum here if you have any opinions about the proposed rules you’d like to share.
A full change-by-change document is available here.
Fall rolls end with anticlimax
Fall rolls 2008 came to a cold and boring end with a pair of cancellations and no mini-raceday for the men’s teams. I know I usually call the current kids wimps for canceling because of cold, but it was 16 degrees, windy, and icy this morning. Fair enough.
Some end of the semester stats :
- There were 355 total rolls over 6 days (4 days canceled)
- Sweepstakes averaged 30.6 buggies around the course per scheduled hour of rolls
- 12 orgs rolled a total of 32 different buggies
- Fringe (74) and SDC (63) send the most buggies down the hill, while KDR (10) and SAE (8) took the fall a bit easier.
- The most active buggy-driver combo was Fringe’s Jess in Blizzard with 18 rolls
- According to one timing source (additional sources of data welcome), orgs stacked up like this according to their fastest freeroll of the semester
Continue reading
Nov 2nd roll schedule
Rolls will be Sunday-only this weekend in observance of Halloween parties. Saturday is the better day to miss for the weekend because Sunday is the first day without Daylight Savings time which robs us of an hour of rolls each morning. So don’t forget to set your clock back, and then also set it to wake up earlier. Roads close at 6:20, first roll will be Spirit at 6:40.
Freeroll Practice, 10/19/08
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Pioneers did not roll today because didn’t pass capes. Driver/chair Vincent Zeng, former CIA chair and driver, tipped over in Keres during a cape attempt and the pushbar broke. We wish them luck and hope to seem them out soon.
With most teams scratched for Mid-Semester break, today’s freerolls seemed destined for chaos and anarchy. However, with Sweepstakes chair Andrew Hundt’s good foresight and a lot of cooperation from the teams, the day went smoothly. An interim assistant chair was appointed for the weekend to help with Sweepstakes duties. Alumni were solicited for barricade duty, but it wasn’t necessary in the end because non-rolling teams came out to do their chores.
Six teams rolled, seven scratched, and “rollarounds” were allowed. In theory this means that a team completing their freeroll has the option to roll again from the top of Hill 2 if the following team scratches. In reality, it meant that some teams just rolled whenever there was a gap. Here’s the breakdown.
Click on buggy names for info and a picture.
Continue reading
Proposed rule changes, take 2
After discussing the rules amendments at the Sweepstakes meeting, the following has developed as v2. It looks like it will be put to vote next week. The big differences are that instead of increasing fines for chores violations, the fines will be transfered to the account of the org that covers the chores. So, as in last weekend, CIA’s drivers would have earned the team a free day of bagels and juice.
Second thing is that the fall sweepstakes meeting would be held at least one week earlier, but not necessarily the week after races. Discuss it *here*!
Full text of the rule proposals: