Day 1 Recap

[Zatchmo]

that's lame. 5-second rule really? who protests that? Where's the sportsmanship? save it for when it causes an actual problem

I would generally agree with this.

I'm not so sure about this point. While I like to claim that sportsmanship trumps all and we are all altruistic people, at the end of the day, if the only thing preventing one of your teams from the finals is pointing out a clear rules violation (that happened to be stressed and discussed at the previous Chairman's meeting), I am not sure I would be such a great sportsman. It's a bigger than sparing a flagger some morning or casual chat about running rolls. If nothing else, a chairman needs to prioritize his or her pushers who might not have another shot at finals, the mechanics that practiced to get their pre-heat timing just perfect, and a driver who has worked at it all year, and it would be demoralizing if they didn't. At the end of the day, I don't look down on any chairman who would go through with the protest for their team like that.

I think of this as another one of those situations where the rule just sucks sometimes. Transition violations also result in DQs, even though they aren't malicious or done in the spirit of cheating in any recent case. So does pacing by idiots who you can't stop. And sometimes you have to ice your A-Team for 30 minutes while waiting for an ambulance to get to the course before your heat. There is a lot of bad luck to go around on raceday.

[hvincent]

it's not quite 2am, and my house in squill is getting pretty soggy right now.

edit: 2:02 am, day 2 just got called.

[TommyK]

sometimes you have to ice your A-Team for 30 minutes while waiting for an ambulance to get to the course before your heat

begin parade of lame excuses.
between 10am and 11am on raceday the air temp in pittsburgh went up 5 degrees F - everyone wants to race in later heats, increased air and road temperatures is a big part of it, allegedly helping both the buggy tires and the pusher performance. the 30-minute delay may have given the last heat as much as a 2 degree increase over the previous heat ... 7 minutes is plenty of time to get psyched up again ... pushers did pretty good, it may be more instructive to look at the frequency of SDC spins, slides and wiggles throughout the year and day and make a supposition that their system of tires, soup and possibly configuration don't give their drivers large enough margins of error for flawless execution.

certainly better than spirit's current condition (hint, move your damn axle forward!!! when was the last time you saw a CIA buggy spin?!?)

[leg]

Spriit may have spun 3/7 of their races (and I doubt that Spirit D deserved a reroll) but they're going home with 2 trophies. High risk high reward strategy?

[Zatchmo]

begin parade of lame excuses.

You have a remarkable ability to miss the point of a post.

[shafeeq]

I haven't watched from the start much until last year, but it is apparent which teams practice their 5-second drill - there were few comical moments where mechanics set their buggy down, turn around to run away and nearly crash into a mechanic from the team in the adjacent lane who's trying to do the same thing.

There were a couple of incidents this year where the commentators missed useful information because the tv cameras were focused elsewhere. That's probably an area where the BAA could work more closely with cmuTV to improve in the future.

Eg: the SigNu crash, which looked to be in a strange spot, and an unusually violent snap change in direction. I hope the driver is recovering well. Also, PiKA C's loss of tire - I'm impressed at how far the buggy made it after that.

PiKA B's crash with Chimera seemed strange as well. Didn't its apparent twin have an apparent steering failure a couple of weeks ago?

Spirit's successful rolls looked about as fast as they were on truck weekend. Their spins looked like they were going much faster. Given that their Hill 1-2's looked impressive, one wonders when the pushers will turn the screws on the mechanics to get them a buggy that lets them find out how fast their back hills can go?

[lemuroid]

Hard to fault the cmu tv cameras from doing their jobs which is to focus on the lead buggy. The sn crash happened just as fringe a was rolling out past the driveway. The hill 3 camera was pointed in the right direction to see a spin had it occurred in a typical direction but this one was only visible to the chute camera and that was pointed 90 degrees from there as it tracked fringe a.

This year we opted to move my position up to the broadcast booth in an attempt to improve the interaction. Thus, no eyes in the chute to give reports.

I believe that move was an error.

[shafeeq]

I don't doubt that the cameramen were doing what they intended to do. The policy of always following the lead buggy misses interesting, and sometimes relevant things happening between the last two buggies. (eg: PiKA & SigEp).

Some spectators in the chute will follow the lead buggy, some will turn to follow the trailing buggies. After all the years you've been watching you have a sense for where the excitement is.
Auto racing coverage will often focus on interesting contests for position when the leader is cruising to victory. They have much more flexibility in being able to record and replay multiple angles than cmuTV does, as far as I understand. I guess it all depends on what the viewers want to see.

I also think that having you in the chute was more infomative, but the chemistry may have been better this time.

[colugodriver]

Hard to fault the cmu tv cameras from doing their jobs which is to focus on the lead buggy. The sn crash happened just as fringe a was rolling out past the driveway. The hill 3 camera was pointed in the right direction to see a spin had it occurred in a typical direction but this one was only visible to the chute camera and that was pointed 90 degrees from there as it tracked fringe a.

This year we opted to move my position up to the broadcast booth in an attempt to improve the interaction. Thus, no eyes in the chute to give reports.

I believe that move was an error.

Mark, we definitely missed your broadcast from the chute this year. Hope you get moved back to your post for next year.

[nbonaddio]

My apologies if this was mentioned upstream, but why no scoreboard?