[dtengineering]

Wow. What a poor, poor ruling from GDC, especially the comment about "lawyering" the rules and looking for loopholes. That was just plain unnecessary and inappropriate. If anyone is guilty of that in this case it is GDC in seeking some faint excuse to justify a very unfortunate ruling. If 1519 is guilty of anything it is guilty of great engineering, creativity and innovation.

Someone in FIRST needs to demonstrate the gracious professionalism required to say, "Well... that isn't what we meant... but it is what we said." and enforce the rules as written, not as intended. Looks like when the going gets tough that the expectation of GP only really applies to teams.

The GDC arguments have been throughly picked apart already in this thread, and I have nothing to add other than my disappointment in this ruling. GDC does a great job, and a difficult job, and 99.9% of the time I can agree with or accept their rulings without protest. In this case, however, I cannot. Perhaps all teams with four bumpers should leave one in the pit for a match just to demonstrate solidarity with 1519 and make it quite clear that just because a team has 15 pounds of bumpers doesn't mean they have to use all 15 pounds all the time.

Thank goodness that 1519 and Fezzik did so well without the help of Speed Racer... perhaps they even did better because they now had 30 lbs to ballast with that they would have been unable to use had Speed Racer been ruled an attachment, but a fortunate outcome hardly makes up for an unfortunate ruling.

Jason