[Madison]

We've now experienced two years of the new qualification system for The Championship Event, implemented in direct response to the rapid growth in the number of participating teams.

The qualification criteria have placed a bias upon a robot's performance, making it valuable, but still offer opportunities for team's to qualify, irrespective of their machine's capability.

Question of the Week 6-01-03: Have the new qualification criteria "raised the bar" in The Championship Event? Has the event become more competitive as a result of its admission of only certain teams, or are there adequate procedures in place to ensure that winning isn't paramount to a team's ability to compete successfully at the Championship Event?

As someone who's never really paid much attention to the competitions themselves, particularly in The Championship, I'm interested in seeing if people think that it's become more competitive in recent years and if that's a positive change.