The Raceday 2026 Prelims Lead Truck Auction is now live! Please read the terms on the auction site, especially the bold print, to ensure you are able to claim your hard-fought lead truck seat. Auctions close at 9PM Thursday, so be sure to distract your friends at our Happy Hour at Cappy’s so you can outbid them.

The auction for Finals seats, including the All-Gender races, will take place live and in-person, immediately following the History of Buggy, at 5PM Friday at the CUC brown chairs.

Supporting the Buggy Alumni Association is a great way to support the greater buggy community. We have teams of dedicated volunteers documenting the history of the sport, facilitating the raceday broadcast, hosting events for students, friends, family, and alumni year round, and connecting students with resources to help keep their team on the course.

The teams committee has a new revision of The Essential Build Book. This is a major rework thanks to DG’s feedback while building their first buggy, Banta! This year, teams received financial support from the BAA to fund safety improvements, bringing older buggies up to modern safety standards.

From our history and website committees, we’ve published the earliest known Raceday video – the Finals of Raceday 1930! We have updated our database for 1930 and added photos of each of the 8 buggies that competed that year to our gallery. Our plans to post more historical Racedays to YouTube continues. Those who attend Carnival this year will get a special sneak peek – If you’re back for your 35th Reunion (Class of ’91) or you were in CIA 50 years ago (1976), make sure to stop by Buggy Showcase (or find the BAA with a laptop) and you’ll get to watch your Raceday, in preparation for Raceday 2026.

We continue to expand our Buggy photo gallery, with over 41,000 photos and videos of buggy from the past 126 years now on our site. And the (daunting) task of tagging and captioning all of those photos for easy viewing reference presses on. We’ve continued to update our database with more race information from the 1980s-1990s, trying to make it as complete as possible (including rosters).

Safe travels! Get hyped! We’ll see you on the course!

Thanks to all the rolls reporting contributors over the semester!!

What’s up, Buggy fans. Welcome to the first taste of the softest, slowest, weakest pillow fight of a Raceday in recent memory. After last year’s “race” was pushed a week past Carnival due to the wrath of Pittsburgh weather, you’d think teams would be ready to go (or at least attempt to roll during Spring Break and Truck Weekend). Instead, top to bottom, the buggies are rolling as if they have their disappointed alumni’s hopes and dreams dragging behind them through the chute. Practices seem to constantly come to a stop, hatches are falling off left and right, pushers are tripping and stumbling all over the course like Fergie in 2006, the Greeks spent more time practicing their picket lines than their hill transitions, and Sweepstakes has decided to coddle the teams by replacing most DQs with 6-second time penalties. Apparently, when they triple the number of people in charge, nobody is left with the spine to actually enforce the rules. I’d hand out my own DQs for sheer mediocrity, but frankly, this field isn’t even worth the paperwork.

Fringe is desperately searching for new ways to stay relevant after losing their one claim to fame: a quarter-century of top three Design Comp finishes that vanished the moment they forced SDC to participate. To compensate, they mimicked their adversary’s approach and spent the year building a massive wooden monstrosity on wheels that looks more like their lackluster booths than a buggy. In a damning indictment of Sweepstakes’ bloated safety committee, this lumbering splinter-factory managed to pass capes. It’s honestly a shame that the buggy wasn’t allowed to race, because it would likely outroll half of their active fleet.

Not to be outdone in the bizarre side-quest department, Apex has decided to race with the robots after accepting that the All-Gender race is no longer the easy win it was years ago, and their podium hopes have been extinguished. When they can’t out-push or out-build the human teams, surrendering to the singularity and rolling a Roomba is the only logical next step. Their new buggy, Kerosene (named after the multitude of times their mechanics have almost burned down Gesling Stadium), has a vibrant oil-slick paint job that spectators will get to admire for an extra long time as it dawdles through the chute turn.

It has become clear that over in the Greek quad, minimal effort is a way of life. SAE made it out for the first time two weeks before raceday, with most assuming that their chapter had been kicked off campus again. SigNu also didn’t make it to the course until recently because, unsurprisingly, members of the Zoo have a serious lack of game and are incapable of recruiting a female driver. Right now, their only real sign of life is their alumni clogging up Discord chats.

PiKA has spent years flirting with organizational collapse, and there are no signs of that changing anytime soon. To kick off the year, they handed the leadership reins to a Freshman whose family history on the course is already a safety hazard. To spike their aging alumni base’s cortisol even more, the brothers have found new ‘safety liaisons’ to lubricate their operations both on and off the course. Still stuck with only their biggest, slowest tank of a buggy that is now old enough to drive itself to the starting line, the brothers have resorted to pulling another rusty buggy out of an alumnus’ garage, and even then, they haven’t managed to restore it to a rollable state. It’s the exact kind of low-effort disarray that we’ve come to expect from the S.L.A.G.s.

Spirit and SigNu were the only teams to vote against the new 6-second penalty rules, entirely because their only path to a trophy relies on the good teams getting DQed. Spirit continues their tendency to do ballet in the chute whenever they go fast, and there are no signs of stopping. They might be the two-time defending champions of the People’s Choice Award, but their people clearly don’t care about making it to the finish line.

Delta Gamma has finally graduated from Fringe’s dumpster, rolling out a new build that they claim is pretty quick: shocking, coming from a team whose mascot is literally designed to sink. That’s an impressive feat, but they also special-ordered glamorous, glittery pink wheels that don’t fit in either of their buggies. It’s exactly what you would expect from DG: they finally have a buggy that can compete, they just can’t figure out how to put the shoes on without a matching handbag.

SigEp has firmly established themselves as contenders, though it’s a shame that their sportsmanship, ability to follow rules, and basic moral fiber haven’t kept pace. After years of irrelevance, incompetence, and DQing half or more of their entries, they finally found some speed. However, that speed doesn’t mean anything when they drive off their whole women’s team and get DQ’d for having a few confused brothers run alongside their pusher. Maybe they should review the rules before Raceday instead of throwing a house-wide temper tantrum after they get caught pacing half a dozen times in a single heat. What about this rule is so hard to follow? Just do what SigNu does and don’t have anyone show up to support the team. This way, there is nobody to pace with their pushers. We’ll see if SigEp’s strategy will continue to be holding their driver’s hand through the entire course, because apparently, following the rules is a bridge too far for their collective IQ.

CIA looks less like a defending champion and more like a Berlin U-Bahn trainwreck. For a team that usually follows a yearly build cycle like a religious obligation, the silence coming from their shop is deafening. With no new buggy, no decent pusher in sight, and freeroll times consistently slower than Apex, it’s no wonder that half their freshman class is quitting the team to go somewhere else. The only “Involvement” left in CIA comes from a group of alumni who, in a blatant violation of the rules, spend the days before Raceday clogging up the basement of a freshman dormitory surrounded by flammable chemicals and ball bearings like they’re back in the 70s. One has to wonder if Sweepstakes will finally find the gumption to disqualify them for this illegal meddling, because, fortunately for CIA, a little bit of cheating might be all it takes for them to keep up with the competition this year.

SDC used to be the most hated, secretive, and genuinely mean team on the course, and I almost miss it. They’ve become the very thing they used to hate: a bloated, bureaucratic mess that cares more about preaching safety than rolling fast, which is hilariously hypocritical when they consistently crash their buggies more than any other team. They even offer to publicize their supposedly superior safety technology, which is rich considering they “forgot” to bring their steering to last year’s Design Comp. Now, they’re struggling to finish a new build and are rolling on dated wheels that are worse than the rest of the field. While their fastest two buggies are still setting the pace, that advantage is as water-soluble as their egos.

And that, Buggy fans, is your definitive look at Raceday 2026. It may be a slow year, but it’ll likely be a close one. AEPi and Atlas are likely gone for good, the All-Gender course record is still slower than the Women’s course record, and I need a drink. I can’t wait to see this year’s races, but you’ll never meet me.

Men’s:

1. SDC A
2. SigEp B
3. CIA A
4. SDC B
5. CIA B
6. PiKA A
7. “Honorable” Mention: SigEp A (pacing: 24 second penalty, unsportsmanlike conduct: DQ)

Women’s:

1. CIA A
2. SDC A
3. CIA B
4. SDC B
5. DG A
6. CIA C

All-Gender

1. SigEp’s pacers, winning the race unintentionally.
2. The circumcised remains of Starling’s pushbar.
3. SAE, apparently?
4. Bractor, fueled by unadulterated hubris and a complete disregard for the laws of physics.
5. A 1988 Spirit alumnus, who still thinks he can run a 14-second H5 if he had the right orthopedic inserts.
6. Road rash, the must-have accessory for this year’s pushers.

The Field

Apex – “I’m not like other girls” isn’t a buggy award
CIA – The dog that caught the car realized it doesn’t know how to drive
DG – They’re called brakes, not breaks
Fringe – Locally sourced, artisanal, and 100% organic failure
PiKA – You’d go faster if your pushers didn’t show up wearing your driver’s clothes
SAE – Wait a minute… who are you?
SDC – The only thing more intimidating than your pushers is a light drizzle
SigEp – The rules are easy to follow if you’d just learn how to read!
SigNu – Too bad your alumni can’t build pushers and drivers for you
Spirit – At least your T-shirts look nice?
Robobuggy – Error 404: competition detected; initiating emergency shutdown
Sweepstakes – Too many cooks in the kitchen

Photos: Saturday Gallery (upload) / Sunday Gallery (upload)

General Observations:

Team Observations:

Lastly, Truck Weekend is coming up in a few days! If you are coming out please let me know! We would love a little help timing. If you can help take pictures or take notes, sign-up here, or just show up! That sheet also has links to upload photos (updated every week). Let us know if you upload photos so we can give you credit (DM Barsham or data at cmubuggy dot org). You can always send notes or corrections to me by email (danbecerra at cmubuggy dot org) or on discord (@.dbec).

Thanks to James, Rob, Jazz, Connor and Guillermo for contributions this week!

Of course, we already have experience in the BAA with Artificial Intelligence through our raceday predictions provided by MechaJockey. However, we wanted to find a way for the greater community to actively engage with our data and alumni experience from the last hundred years. MechaJockey is not efficient enough to run full time interactively (and besides, who knows what MechaJockey might do to us meatbags). Thus we needed to develop a new, vibrant, and ovine-forward approach. A chatbot was really the only possible answer to meet these needs.

With that in mind, we herded multiple departments at the university including the CS department, Computing Services, and Landscaping to shepherd the necessary skills to bring such an experience to life. Together, this group of experts have developed a new form of LLM that we call the neural flock (paper to be published later this year in the respected journal “Colamborations of the ACM”).

Thus, today we are pleased to announce SchenleyAI, available for public use on our discord. As an early beta, SchenleyAI is able to answer simple yes or no questions. It has been extensively trained on all of our most active discord discussions, as well as the older forum archives, history data, photos, rolls reports, and miscellaneous other buggy content we have at our disposal. As it happens, the insights provided by our most vocal alumni proved to be the key to bring this vast knowledge together.

Today’s release is the beginning — a beta test capable of responding to your yes or no questions about buggy (we’re keeping it simple, as things always have a risk of going wrong with new Buggy Software). You can try it today in any of our public discord channels. Simply preface your question with ‘$schenley‘. For example:

Our experiences so far have been Not Baaaaaad, but we look forward to seeing what everyone else can bleat out of it. We can hardly imagine all the new concepts that AI will bring to our favorite sport. Log into our discord and give it a try today!

Update: We would like to thank everyone for participating in our initial test of SchenleyAI. However, upon reflection, training on the chats of the most vocal and opinionated alumni might not have been the best plan, and we have discontinued the service and placed SchenleyAI into a virtual field where he can frolic and graze to his heart’s content.

Org	Saturday	Sunday
Apex	Molotov, Solaris, Scorch, Kerosene	Helios, Molotov, Solaris, Kerosene
CIA	Goldfinch, Roadrunner, Kingfisher	Starling, Emperor
DG	Insite	Banta, Insite
Fringe	Blind Faith, Blackbird, “ovanni”	Blackbird, Bermuda, Baltic
Robobuggy	NAND, Short Circuit	NAND, Short Circuit
SAE	Barbie	—
SDC	—	Paranoia, Lust, Vice
SigNu	Jaeger	Jaeger
Spirit	Kingpin, Seraph, Inviscid, Zuke	Kingpin, Seraph, Zuke

Photos: Saturday Gallery (Upload) | Sunday Gallery (Upload)

General Observations

• We had rain Friday night, ending early Saturday morning. Between the fairly warm weather, some breeze, and a little time, the roads were mostly dry by the time rolls were actually getting started. They were certainly better than during Mini Raceday in November, but SDC decided to scratch for the day early in the morning.
• With teams getting their drivers qualified, it looks like more teams are being able to dedicate more resources into getting the rest of their race squared up. Full hills, possibly some wheel treating or extra tune-ups and teams are noticeably faster this weekend compared to last.
• The minor inconvenience this weekend was apparently losing hatches. We lost 3 back hatches across the 2 days. If only we had sports betting for what the top DQ item would be…

Team Observations

• Apex — Early on Sunday, Apex debuted ANOTHER new buggy! Kind of — robotic buggy “Kelvin” made their debut with a course walk pre-sunrise. Back in the human-sized buggy category, Apex didn’t have any incidents or events to report on this weekend. However, I will note that it seems like Kerosene isn’t rolling as fast as some of their other buggies. In fact, both Molotov and Solaris, two of their older buggies, were rolling up higher than Scorch or Kerosene on Hill 3. Maybe they just have to work out all those new-buggy bugs.

• CIA — CIA isn’t bringing out a new buggy this year, but we did see a paint-free buggy on the course this weekend. Initially I thought it was maybe Goldfinch, but turns out this was Starling (with a potentially shorter pushbar? See a side-by-side below). Their buggies looked good through the freeroll this weekend, though there might be some details to hash out in terms of their relative speeds, as I saw Emperor catch up to Starling at the end of the Chute and nearly take out their Hill 3’s ankles.

• DG — Sunday, DG got a real taste of running a multi buggy team. It looks like they didn’t have quite enough pushers to cover their backhills — Shoutout to the SPIRIT pushers helping out here. DG was also one of the teams to lose a back hatch, leading to a stop flag thrown, and their following buggy to blow through them. Better to learn this lesson now than on Raceday, though.

• Fringe — This week, Fringe has given me something worth writing about! For the second week in a row, we had pesky pedestrians. With a guy on the bales as the Blackbird and Blind Faith were coming up on the chute flag, they got stop flags and both came to a stop during Saturday’s rolls. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Bermuda’s driver brake and came to a controlled stop at the bottom of Hill 3 after running into a vision problem after the chute

• Robobuggy — Seems like Robobuggy was having some trouble out on the course this weekend. Saturday they hit the curb a couple of times, which perhaps influenced their decision to jog their buggies around the course on Sunday. Since last week, Short Circuit has also gained a shell, meaning both robobuggies internals are covered.

• SAE — We saw Barbie for the first time this year on Saturday. They were rolling together with Fringe to help pad out their rolls count, getting to 6 rolls compared to the 3-4 times through the rolls order, despite only being out one day. There is still time to qualify, but we’ll see how quickly the team is able to learn and iron out all their operational kinks.

• SDC — SDC stayed home Saturday, but was back out again on Sunday. We did see Vice sporting a new gold tint windshield, as well as get around the course without incident this week. She was still on bags, but there are still a few weekends to get up to top speed. Paranoia and Lust did not look as quick as usual, but that may have just been the step change of improvement we saw from a lot of the other teams this weekend.

• SigNu — I’ve probably been most impressed with SigNu’s performance in terms of how they are just hitting the ground running. In just a few days, their driver has gone from starting fresh this spring after a few years off from driving, to putting up rollouts on par with some of the SDC rolls. However, I can’t say that any of their pushers have blown me away with how quick they are. We’ll see if they’re hiding some quick guys in the chapter who haven’t made it out yet, or if they’re able to recruit a competitive Women’s/All Gender team.

• Spirit — Saturday we saw 2 of them being classic primer-grey, causing buggy archivists concern about how to ID them properly. However, by Sunday, they had already gotten base paint layers on both Zuke (Blue) and Kingpin (Orange). On the performance side, Seraph was looking really good this weekend. By Sunday, they were also rolling far up Hill 3 consistently, with some preliminary timing showing them as having the fastest freeroll this weekend. However, we also saw Zuke fishtail (but recover) and Kingpin spin (their driver is ok). Overall, I have high hopes for their A-team, but think they may struggle with the consistency for producing results further down their roster.

As always, if you would like to help contribute notes or photos/video for these rolls reports, you can sign up to help here or reach out to Dan.

If you have additional notes or corrections, feel free to reach out to myself (@jamestwong on Discord / jameswong@cmubuggy.org) or Dan (@.dbec on Discord / danbecerra@cmubuggy.org).

Thanks to Rob and Guillermo for their contributions this week!

We also got our first look at the new buggies debuting this year! Highlighted in the table below:

Org	Saturday	Sunday
Apex	Solaris, Scorch, Kerosene	Helios, Molotov, Kerosene
CIA	Goldfinch, Roadrunner, Kingfisher	Goldfinch, Emperor, Roadrunner
DG	Banta	Banta, Insite
Fringe	Bermuda, Blackbird, “orse”	Blackbird, Bermuda
PiKA	Raptor	Raptor
Robobuggy	NAND, Short Circuit	NAND, Short Circuit
SDC	Paranoia, Lust, Vice	Paranoia, Lust, Avarice
SigEp	Barracuda	—
SigNu	Jaeger	Jaeger
Spirit	Inviscid, Zuke	Seraph, Zuke

Photos: Saturday Gallery (Upload) | Sunday Gallery (Upload)

General Observations

• This was a rougher weekend for sure. We had a number of controlled stops, along with 1 proper stop. From all the interspersed breaks between rolls, it never really felt like we got into a good flow and we only got through the rolls order 2-3 times each day.
• Another note is the relative lack of scrambling to get pass tests in. With many drivers being able to do their passes in the fall, only a couple pass tests were attempted this weekend.
• As mentioned above, new buggies! Apex, DG, and Fringe bought out their new builds for the first time this weekend — we’ve included some bonus content for them at the end of this rolls report.

Team Observations

• Apex — Apex had a fairly smooth weekend, running a 3-deep roster alongside their new buggy debut. The only hiccup came from a pesky pedestrian — with the transition flagger throwing a stop flag before the situation could escalate. Impressive how buggies are easier to control than pedestrians. Other than that, Apex had a clean couple of rolls.

• CIA — Usually when doing a pass test, you only keep one buggy bagged. During an unintentional pass, we got to see a double-bagged pass in the chute that was very reminiscent of the CIA/Fringe pass in the chute from 2025. Aside from this, CIA had a relatively uneventful weekend, rolling well both days.

• DG — Plenty of excitement abound, with DG bringing out their new buggy, Banta. They very confidently shoved off from Hill 2 for its first roll around the course, and I’m happy to report we saw no trouble on its first weekend out! They also got to make the jump from being a single buggy team, to running 2 buggies with Insite out on Sunday. Insite needed a bit of a Hill 2.5 bump after getting slowed by its first bagged roll, but recovered throughout the morning as it shed bags.

• Fringe — We only got to see Fringe’s new buggy out on Saturday this week, so we aren’t able to make super confident statements about how fast it’ll look without bags. They brought out Blackbird and Bermuda on both Saturday and Sunday, and got in a pass test.

• PiKA — PiKA’s pushers on the backhills seemed a bit disorganized. I hear they were missing their Hill 3 pickup on the first roll of the weekend. Neither of their Hill 4 to 5 transitions I watched were really transitions, with their Hill 4 either shoving off way after or way before the transition zone. However, Raptor showed good speed coming through the chute and rolling up Hill 3. Hopefully with push practice starting this week, their pushers will figure out how to properly hand off before Raceday.

• Robobuggy — We saw Robobuggy bring out both NAND and Short Circuit to the course this week. This week, they had NAND fully dressed up with its top shell and LEDs. While it took them a while to fully get up to speed, by the end of Sunday they were coming through the chute at a respectable pace.

• SDC — This weekend was certainly a mixed bag for SDC. On one hand, you had Paranoia looking quick across the course, with their pushers clearly running hard. On the other, they struggled getting Avarice and Vice around the course. Both came to controlled stops for fogging/vision related issues. And in the one roll where things were looking promising for their new drivers, Lust’s hatch came unsecured at the end of the chute, forcing them to stop Vice midway through the freeroll.

• SigEp — We saw SigEp out only on Saturday this weekend, rolling Barracuda. Cuda had a smooth day, and their pushers were looking fairly quick as well. They should need just one more day on the course in order to get their driver qualified.

• SigNu — It was our first time seeing SigNu back this year, bringing out Jaeger. Here we see the return from a “Technically New” driver, with them having raced back in 2023. Either way, they looked fairly comfortable getting back up to speed over this weekend.

• Spirit — Sunday, we saw our first proper accident of the year with Zuke taking a spin in the chute and bumping the inner haybales. Their driver is ok, and we’ll see next week whether they try to change their line to avoid getting into spin territory again. Aside from that, we also saw clean rolls from both Inviscid and Seraph this weekend.

Bonus New Buggy Spotlight

Kerosene

Apex has now debuted their 10th buggy — sporting some very fashionable wild west capybara wrapping paper. While I heard some murmurings that it was not wrapped well and falling off at the butt, I am much more confident that their carbon wraps went much better.

Banta

We’re told that the name for Banta comes from George Banta, an influential figure in the founding of DG (also conveniently could be a portmanteau of Katy Zapanta and Sophia Battaglia’s last names, prominent pioneers of DG’s buggy program)

We at the BAA are very excited to see Banta out on the course, as it would be the first sorority-built buggy to complete the course on Raceday!

“Borse”*

Borse is not the official name of Fringe’s new buggy. Please do not use this name during the broadcast on Raceday. The philosophical question posed to the buggy community writ large is, who would win a triathlon — you or a horse? I think my answer is contingent on finding a horse-sized bike. Feel free to debate in the comments, or over on Discord.

As always, if you would like to help contribute notes or photos/video for these rolls reports, you can sign up to help here or reach out to Dan.

If you have additional notes or corrections, feel free to reach out to myself (@jamestwong on Discord / jameswong@cmubuggy.org) or Dan (@.dbec on Discord / danbecerra@cmubuggy.org).

Thanks to Rob and Guillermo for their contributions this week!

1. People to staff the BAA tent, who will dispense schedules, spotters guides, and information to fans new and old
2. People to help in the official timing booth, transcribing race times into our live-updating table as each race ends
3. People to participate on-screen in the broadcast booth, alongside the illustrious Will Weiner, other familiar beloved characters, and maybe Connor too.

You’ll see in the sign-up sheets that you can volunteer to help on specific segments of the weekend, so you can stay free for any other times. The more volunteers we get, the less weight any one person has to carry, so please encourage your friends to sign up too!

You can sign up to help with timing or tent staffing at https://cmubuggy.org/volunteer.
If you want to commentate on the broadcast, use this link! https://cmubuggy.org/broadcast-volunteer.

We’ll see you at Raceday!

Apply Here:
http://cmubuggy.org/2026springgrant

Keeping grant applications open throughout the fall allowed us to better serve the buggy community by engaging with students closer to the moment of inspiration for their proposal. This doubled the number of projects that the committee was able to consider last semester. Please note that proposals for larger dollar amounts may be asked to wait until the start of the next semester so that other projects can be considered along side them.

Thank you for all of our Golden Goose Lifetime Members who have made this program possible. If you would like to support this program, a contribution of $1,000 to the Buggy Endowed Fund will earn you a Golden Goose Lifetime Membership to the BAA. These funds are invested by the university, and the return on that investment perpetually funds the Buggy Enhancement Grant program, making the sport safer, faster, and more fun for all who enjoy it for many years to come!

Become a Lifetime Member Here:
http://cmubuggy.org/membership