FSAE scoring, always a bit of a guess until the final results are posted, appears to have Missouri S&T in 5th place overall and that is the assumption that is driving the Miners' strategy today. The endurance races started about 20 minutes ago and the official description of the course is "damp". Slower teams will run throughout the morning and the top four teams in design (which the Miners just missed) will run head-to-head right after lunch, followed by the Miners' run group at 2:00 p.m. The Rolla team had a superb score in yesterday's autocross but the officials assessed some penalty time for nicking cones along the way. The autocross course is run on the MIS back straight-away so the cars sometimes are too far away from the crowd to see if cones have been hit or a driver has even missed a turn and run off course. A couple of cars didn't let a few little cones impede their momentum and simply ran over over the little critters, even to the point of dragging a cone all the way around the course. Not only did they suffer penalty points but it doesn't take an engineer to figure out the friction coefficient of shoving a cone hundreds of yards along the asphalt.
Race officials set up run groups cars of similar overall scores to keep slower cars from impeding the higher-performing speedsters. This morning a few cars may be running rain tires, and while rain still threatens (and in fact it is drizzling right now) we think the wind and tire heat will have the track dry for S&T's afternoon run. The endurance race is 22km long and each team must change drivers once during their track time so a well-rehearsed pit crew is an absolute requirement. Each endurance car starts at one-minute intervals, sent off by the green-flag guy, similar to Thursday's acceleration lanes at left.
This morning's M*A*S*H* 4077th P.A. update has a Florida team asking for a loan of sunshine and warmer temperatures. They probably won't push their luck and ask for sand and a beach chair, we'd bet.
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