[Deetman]

Originally Posted by Siri

Does anyone see/know of any benefit to the Wednesday evening load-in versus waiting until Thursday morning?

Also, any idea why the 45 minutes Thursday morning are still reserved like that? It used to be for uncrating, but now that everyone's just opening a bag it seems that time could theoretically be given back to the teams.

If I had to guess this is mainly for logistics purposes. The more you can split teams up trying to load in, the less congestion and confusion there should be both on the loading dock and the pits. I would imagine there will be a split with the teams closer to the Philadelphia area electing to load in Wednesday night and teams traveling a larger distance loading in Thursday morning. There is probably a volunteer benefit as well with needing less people there Wednesday night.

As for the dedicated 45 minutes, in addition to the logistics benefits of keeping the pits as clear as possible, this doesn't give a team that unloaded Wednesday night 45 minutes of extra time Thursday morning (although not that much in the FIRST world) that a team loading in Thursday would not have.