Now that Carnival is just on the horizon, it’s time to let you guys in on what we’ve been cooking up for you. In this first installment, we introduce to you our first three panelists who will be on stage Friday after the races at 2pm. They will be asked questions by our moderator and then also open for questions from you in the audience. So if you’ve ever wanted to ask a question of someone you see here, be sure to show up!
Below we hear from our more experienced panelists as they tell us a bit about themselves. Some of these names you might recognize from other events and even right here on cmubuggy.
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.
The weekend started on a sour note as Saturday got cancelled on account of snow early in the morning. Fortuantely, someone still got use of the roads as the crash test SURG project was able to test their setup by running a weighted mock buggy into the haybales at speed. There was no data gathered, but the results were still spectacular. Sunday was frigid, but lacked snow allowing teams to roll. Many drivers seemed to be having trouble with sun glare going up the backhills. Teams have only one regular weekend left before Truck to get the rolls they need. We can only assume that there will be several more exemptions than normal this year, the only hope being that it doesn’t also cause an increase in incidents.
Finally able to kick off the year, all teams were out on Saturday for the first Day of Spring rolls. After weeks and weeks of cold and icy roads, the weather finally cooperated long enough for Saturday. For some reason there were no permits for Sunday, so even though the weather was nice enough, teams were forced to sleep in and/or stay warm. As it happened, this Saturday was also Greek Sing which made it even more impressive to see the teams (including the frats) in mostly full force. Clearly the teams understand what needs to get done in this extremely short lead-up to Raceday.
With Saturday being sub 20 degrees, rolls were cancelled by Friday afternoon, but Sunday warmed right up and made for a surprisingly pleasant last day of rolls. Rolls were delayed early on due to wet roads and some teams were a little more hesitant than that and waited to see how everyone else did before giving it a go.
Now that teams have some extra daylight savings time, they got a chance to square off against each other and compete in a slightly early Mini-Raceday. Sweepstakes managed to get timers out for all splits around the course and teams got to get a rough time for front hills, Freeroll, backhills, and overall (if they did all 3). Some teams seemed burned out by Mini-Raceday and Sunday quickly turned into a free-for-all of roll-arounds for the teams willing to put in the effort. Teams that rolled both days were rewarded with a relatively warm morning after a quite frigid Mini-Raceday.
Saturday was called off for all the Halloween shenanigans leaving teams only with the extra long, daylight-savings-adjusted Sunday. Despite there only being 6 teams out, they managed to rack up a full 90 rolls around the course. After a smooth start to the morning, things got more hectic as teams scratched for a break in the madness causing a cascade of scratching as teams weren’t ready for the quick turn around.