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British Columbia put their car into a half spin and stalled on one of their passes. They were able to continue again, albeit with a cone stuck under their car. Also check out where that spin took place: Right by the scoring truck. Yikes! |
Both the Skidpad and Acceleration events ran into Friday morning. The rest of Friday was devoted to running the Autocross track. This is where the teams can really flex their muscle and go all out. Unlike in California, Lincoln had separate Autocross and Endurance courses. In California, the Endurance course was also the Autocross course, except with the addition of a few extra corners to close it in. Some teams take this event very seriously. The University of Manitoba actually walked the course with a camera. Back in their trailer, their drivers sat in their 2011 car in front of a monitor of the video, sped up to simulate what they thought would be race speeds. Unfortunately their preparations would be for naught as their differential imploded on their second run. From what I heard, some of the internal bolts sheared and caused a massive internal failure. They were able to swap in their 2011 car’s differential, but they would not complete any more Autocross runs.
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| Manitoba pushes their car back to the pits after their differential breaks. Their car was very quick and their drivers were very good. Too bad reliability issues and bad luck got the better of them. |
Another major catastrophe was the University of Oklahoma. Instead of describing their failure…scroll down.
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| Yup, their rear wing mounts failed. Luckily both driver and car were okay. This happened on their third pass. |
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From this angle you can see how bad the failure was. The track marshals helped prop it up and the car drove off course for repairs. The team ended up removing the wing for the Enduro. |
Missouri once again took the win, posting a whopping 53.462 second win. Over 1.5 seconds behind was Kansas at 55.025 seconds. In third was Rochester Institute of Technology with a 57.832 second lap.
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Some teams would never even see the finish line. California Polytech of Pomona would bow out with some sort of steering failure in their first run. That first run was good for 17th in the Autocross though! One wonders what they could have done with their remaing three passes. |
