[EricH]

Andrew, I'm going to suggest the reason that dedication is taking precedence over skill for a lot of people. Actually, multiple reasons...

1) If all you're doing is driving the robot, sure, you'll be skilled at that. But now, picture this: It's match F2 at your event, and your robot suddenly has a major failure. You have no timeout, and the finals are tied 1-1. Your opponents also don't have a timeout. You used your backup card already. And you have someone on the drive team who has little to no idea how to fix the robot, because he spent all his time driving. (We're using worst-case scenario here: you have a limited number of people allowed during finals, and you can't make the pits in time. Venue-dependent, of course.) That's one set of hands that is, for all intents and purposes, useless in trying to get a fix done in time. Well, go-fers aren't useless, but they do need some speed.

What I'm trying to get at here is that if all you're doing is driving, you don't know where problems might be, which means that the pit crew has to find them. If you have some idea of where problems are (because you spent some time building and learned that, say, gearboxes that get out of alignment bind up), you're a lot more useful to the team. And that extra pair of hands fixing the robot just might make the difference between winning and losing match F3--and the event.

2) Driving skills can be learned (well, assuming that someone isn't taking all the stick time) by just about anybody. Some people just have a better knack at it, or need time to mature in that position. I could drive a robot. Would I be as good as some other members of my team? Nope. Could I get there, with time? Probably. With that same amount of time, could they improve? Sure.

3) This is purely hypothetical here, as is the next situation: Let's assume, for a moment, that you have a case where you really need the driver to do something else for 10 minutes. Maybe it's something that people don't really want to do, or maybe it isn't, but someone has to do it, and everyone else is busy (or trying to do it alone). Let's also say that it's important for some reason. If the driver can't leave practicing for 10 minutes, I'd be somewhat concerned about how much of a team player he is/was/will be when there are others out there. (How concerned depends on how much of a pattern I could see of that sort of thing.) See the finals repair above.

4) Second hypothetical--but this one has happened: The skilled driver is incapacitated. How is beyond where I want to go, but let's figure it's serious enough that he's out for significant time (day, 2 days, maybe even all competition). Now, tell me this: who drives? Right. Nobody--unless someone else dedicated steps up.

Personally, what I'd do with the skilled/not quite knowledgeable vs. knowledgeable/not quite skilled situation is: If you've got the skills, but aren't learning much about the robot (like, where the likely failure points are, or something similar), then you can train someone who is more dedicated to finding those areas that you don't have experience in how to drive. You can be a backup driver. But I personally would not want that skilled person as a driver in the finals. Not for lack of skill, but because I can't rely on him to be able to diagnose and fix stuff in a hurry. At the same time, the person he is training should be teaching him how the robot functions/works. Then, let the chips fall where they may, I don't have just one driver...

...I have 2 drivers with slightly different strengths (one stronger in driving, one stronger in diagnosis and repair), and can pick a primary and a backup based on other factors like maturity, class standing, who buys me more pizzas, and all that sort of thing. I can even put both of them on finals pit crew, allowing for emergency substitution if needed.