[Carrington]

This is something that we've dealt with in the past and in our experience it's very dependent on the event as Josh has said. At the Championship event in 2011 we had 2-3 working in our pit during the opening ceremony and were actually told by the pit administration that we were in violation of some rule from the manual. We then politely asked them if they would mind checking the manual and to their surprise we pulled up the exact section you are referring to. With the understanding that we weren't going to use any power tools and that we were only going to have a few people working they let us remain in our pit. On the other hand we've tried using this same logic at regional events and been given quite a different response. I can see arguments for both sides of this debate, but as it is now the rules from FIRST do not prohibit members of your team from being in the pit area during the opening ceremonies.