[Abhishek R]

To me, the idea here is that in 6 weeks, teams build a robot that is supposed to be ready for competition. The thing is, when you go to a regional, you see many robots which are just almost at the competitive level, who, given a little more time, would have had things in better shape.

Some of these teams only attend one regional, so by extending the build season, they get a better shot at making that regional more worthwhile. But suppose the team decided that now that they have more time, that they can take maybe one day off each week. Would the robot not be at the same level it would've been at before?

Yes, it does require discipline and planning to use time effectively. But teams are constantly trying to get better, and they would likely use this time to step their competitiveness up another notch. So I think that teams would use all the time they are given to make the most of their advantage.