Quals Recap

So qualifications is in the books for another year and on reflection it was probably a good but not a great day of excitement at the track. The major story is the magnificent achievement of Teter to break the Quals record to take their 3rd consecutive pole position. The stage was set for the fairytale comeback for Tom S as his Wing-it team was sitting on Pole when Teter took to the track. It’s fair to say that the dorm team absolutely crushed the time of Wing-it with a 0.5sec beating of the previous course record (KKG 2005). Better yet they took Teter-style to another level. Last year they looked good in the Mapei-inspired kits but went above and beyond with their Rock-Teter-Racing jerseys of this year.

Record Holders!

On the Men’s side it was a competitive day with the top three teams separated by 0.3s. PDT are worthy pole sitters but special kudos must go to Fiji who set their time at 8am and almost went wire-to-wire. Controversy is never far from the Cutters as there was some questioning of their time from the bleachers even though they for sure looked fast!

So lets go inside the numbers. What else stood out from the day?
- Eric Young of Cutters might have done the fastest warm-up lap in history was he was flying out of turn two. Expect more from Eric on Wednesday at ITTs.
- Collins Bunny Gamma qualed with 5seconds to spare with no chain after it came off in turn four of the final lap. Kudos to their final lap rider who might have ridden off the track in disgust but rolled it through the finish line and they made the race.
- There were some great saves in the exchange box with SoFa (W) and AGD (3rd attempt) having honorable mentions. The best of the day was surely the final exchange of the Army Women pole-setting run. Magnificent.
- Sensible decision of the day went to the DSP (M) team. They chose to do 3 bike-to-bike exchanges on their 3rd attempt to be safe. They rightly knew they had the speed to make the race so making that decision gave them the safest way of getting it the job done.

And onto some stats. I timed the first lap of a few of the (mostly earlier) teams. The stats are biased against teams doing a bike-to-bike exchange as I ended the time when the new bike crossed the start/ finish line and not when the incoming riders slid across the line.

What sticks out from the Men’s stats is the time of C4F. With a first lap like that they must have got in the race if they could have made 3 exchanges! On the Women’s side it shows Kristi Hewitt of Wing-it will be the girl to beat in the series events as her first lap was a full 2 seconds faster than anyone else. The question whether Wing-it is deep enough to compete with Teter will be answered in the next few weeks.

Mens
PDT 33.14
Cutters 33.27
C4F (attempt 2) 33.42
DSP (M) 3 33.58
DSP (M) 1 33.6
GGS 33.61
ATO 2 33.62
DSP (M) 2 33.87
Collins BG 34.63
Twisted Steel 34.7
Phi Psi 2 34.71
Fiji 34.8
BKB 34.8
Sammie 34.85
Sigma Pi 34.92
Wright 2 35.01
Theta Chi 35.86
Delta Chi 36.19
Cinzano 36.26
Pi Kapps 1 36.5
Phi Kappa Sigma 2 36.7
Pi Kapps 2 37
Phi Kappa Sigma 1 37.3
Beta 2 37.8
Beta 1 38.02
Lamdba Chi 1 43.21

Womens
Wing It 33.91
Teter 36.16
Theta 38.26
Pi Phi 2 38.59
Athena 39.72
AoPi 1 39.77
DG 39.8
AoPi 2 39.95
KKG 40.7
Zeta 1 41.01
Gamma Phi 2 41.54
Alpha Xi Delta 2 41.89
Tri-Delt 1 42.55
SDT 1 43.49
Mezcla 1 43.55
Zeta 2 43.77
Alpha Phi 44.4
Mezcla 2 44.53
SDT 2 45.63
Collins 45.8