2018 Races

[shafeeq]

Is this thing on?

The hangover's gone, but I still have to rant about the treatment of PiKA B. There might be situations where a buggy/driver meets all the paper qualifications, but is so demonstrably unstable that in Sweepstakes' general discretion should be not allowed to race, or subject to restrictions. E.g., crashes 50% of the time, but qualifies on paper because they tried twice as many times. In this case, she performed as well on truck Sunday as PiKA B usually does (when it was 40F warmer), so where's any evidence of unsafety?

So we end up with PiKA B restricted in freeroll speed, but with a prelim seeding is based on years when they had no such restriction. So they end up in close quarters in the chute with Spirit B, which neither driver has experience with. Sure sounds "safer" than letting both drivers do their own thing, like they'd practiced.

Having set an artificially slow prelim time, they're allowed to go full speed in the final. If they were allowed full speed in prelims, they would've matched up with PiKA A or SDC A, but instead are in a unnecessarily tight race with CIA A. Sure, Fringe B also outperformed their seeding by doing a pusher swap, but there's plenty of precedent for that.

While everything worked out, it's the failure to consider the totally predictable follow-on effects which bugs me more than the original decision. Sweepstakes had the ability to deal with them if they'd looked one step ahead, but didn't.

[shafeeq]

On a positive note, great to see that everyone is still fighting hard over 2nd place - the competition is tighter than the final results indicate. Fringe could've taken both 2nds if their A pushers were on Blueshift, PiKA had the push talent to overcome surprisingly slow freerolls, CIA can't overcome sloppy transitions, SDC doesn't have the depth it used to, but didn't make mistakes on B. Surprised SigEp & Spirit weren't closer, not sure why.

If SAE figures out the whole wheel thing, they'd be in the trophy mix. A little surprising Apex isn't further ahead in that department, too, given their general level of seriousness. The speed trap says PiKA A wasn't much faster than B, so they must've been playing it safe for once instead of going for the "win or spin".

[mdarcy]

[discussed with sweepstakes directly]

[cmhayes]

At this point only SAE, Apex and Phi Delt haven't figured out the wheels. I don't believe it is a coincidence these are the 3 youngest teams on the course (while SAE is technically very old, the current iteration really only dates back to the late 00's and their knowledge from the 70's and 80's isn't very relevant today). I would also wager that aside from maybe Sig Ep, they have the least money on the course as well. Cracking the wheel game is by far the most expensive and most difficult part of Buggy, and unlike the age of the Xootr or the early years of ZE, there is not a good off the shelf option to roll on and be instantly competitive.
Right now there are 5 teams (PiKA, Fringe, Spirit, SDC, CIA) who can roll within a second of each other (51-52 free roll). Sig Ep is not far behind (53-54). Then the gap to Apex, SAE and Phi Delt (59) is around 5 seconds. I would hope that those lower teams could realize they're behind in the same way, pool some resources and start making gains on the older/richer teams. SAE and Apex would have a lot more trophies from recent years if their wheel game was equal to the top 5.

[Pope on a Rope]

At $200 a pop, the ZE wheel offers cheap, reasonable speed in a package that is widely available. The "wheel game" has never been easier to "crack". If one cannot go reasonably quick on these, wheels are not the issue.

[the cook]

I agree with Mark - you can clearly roll around 52+/- seconds even with slightly sub-par hill 1/2, giant frontal area, and questionable steering maintenance just by strapping on a set of ZE wheels. If you can't, you are almost certainly pointing the wheels in directions that don't often include straight. Any advantage purported to exist on other wheels has not been firmly established. I suspect the newer Spirit and SDC stuff is as good and possibly slightly better, emphasis slight. The magic of the little PiKA wheels seems to be gone, gone, gone.

[shafeeq]

Some things happen often enough that the response should be pre-considered and codified, but they can't cover everything, and if they did, they'd be so long nobody would read them.

So there's always going to be situations that can only be handled by intelligent people on the spot thinking about what they're doing. Speculative rerolls and adding extra heats are discretionary innovations that have worked out well. Sweepstakes are students and are going to make mistakes even without favoritism. When a team makes a mistake, it pays the price which pushes it to do better next time. When Sweepstakes makes a mistake, somebody else pays the price, and due to turnover, the next Sweepstakes starts all over again.

Is it the case that current ZE's are not as fast as the early ones? Or that the top teams have moved forwards since then?
2013 SigEp certainly had scary fast wheels but not the buggy to handle them, and it seems like they've dialed back the wheels since then. Apex was in the 57s this year, I wonder how much of the gap is purely wheels and how much is in the buggy. "Gets around the course at all" was not long ago in Apex's (and even SigEp's) history, the but older teams have had a long time to work on "gets around the course fast".

It'd be nice if the 125mm skate wheels were only a few seconds off the pace, since $20 a pop is dirt cheap by buggy standards and

[Pope on a Rope]

I suspect that off the shelf ZE wheels are within reason, the same as they ever were. Aend molds that stuff (or similar) by the truckload and are unlikely to have made significant changes. There is a short list of things that makes them quicker, the leading one being to get them warm. If an org has not figured this and a few other tweaks out after watching one race day and looking at all the photos on this site, they are not worthy of the improved speed.

I do think that the top teams have moved on with diminishing returns. The huge improvement from stock xootr to stock ze is much greater than the apparent gains to be had with other compounds. Those marginal gains may be well worth the effort and cost if trying to contend for a top spot where the margin between 2nd and 5th could be in the balance. Skate wheels tend to be optimized for the push and not the glide. That and the bearing seats (which are mostly plastic) tend to suck for buggy applications.