Racing the Men's A buggy as Women's A (or not)

[shafeeq]

Some teams do it, and more teams don't. Assuming your men's and women's teams were both have a shot at winning, would you use a different buggy for each because:

A) The men are faster with one buggy, the women with another.
B) The buggies are equal when raced once, but might be slower in a second race.
C) We want to give two drivers a chance to win.
D) The men's buggy is faster when raced once, but might be slower in a second race.
E) The men's buggy is faster when raced once, but we don't want to risk crashing it in the women's race.
F) The men's buggy is faster, but the driver is pushing on your women's team.

Personally, I've run into A and F, but also drivers that generally did better on their second roll of the day than the first.

[lemuroid]

missing answer that would apply to most of the frats:

G: we don't want to risk crashing the men's 'a' buggy during a women's race

[lemuroid]

there was at least one year in the 80s when beta would run their mens a buggy in a women's heat only with a very slow and delayed hill one (pushed by a man) . This was to give the buggy a warm up run before it ran for the men.

[shafeeq]

missing answer that would apply to most of the frats:

G: we don't want to risk crashing the men's 'a' buggy during a women's race

Oops, I'd meant E to cover that.

[swiftsam]

It also has a lot to do with your fleet. If you have one kickass buggy that is 5 seconds faster than your second option, it's more worth the risk to run it twice on raceday. If all of your buggies are similar, you might as well play it safe and keep the marginally faster one for men's.

There's also the tricky issue of light buggies being more important to the women's team. A buggy that is a few seconds slower downhill but 10 pounds lighter is probably a net gain for a women's team.