[Bongle]

This is the first year I haven't been in your situation. What my team did (and what I now recommend EVERY team do) was build the kitbot on day 2 and just left it alone with the programmers. Come week 5 when the mechanical team needs to steal all our precious electronics, we don't care because we already finished all the moving-base stuff: TCS, camera control, PID control, etc were all done while the robot was in the design + prototyping stage.

I completely feel for you: it really sucks getting blamed for poor performance when its mostly the mechanical team's fault for not letting you program on the robot. Try to point out that if they don't give the programmers a few hours on the robot, everything they build will be mostly useless because it won't be controllable. A slight reduction in mechanical capabilities because of something only partially finished is more than made up by a massive increase in robot control.

If you do get time on the robot though, remember to prioritize. Don't waste your valuable hours trying to get TCS or camera control working, those take days or weeks to get right. Plus you can keep your control system and tune the camera after ship. Here's the order I'd work in:
1) Basic robot control (1-button, 1 actuator)
2) Basic autonomous (drive-straight, drive in circle, etc)
3) More advanced robot control (one-button for multiple functions if your robot has them)
4) Get the gyro working, then do more advanced autonomous (pattern-running)
5) Traction control
6) Camera control
Of course, your priorities will vary. A shooter bot would probably have a much higher priority on camera control. But always keep in mind you can keep your control system after ship. If it doesn't HAVE to be tested on the competition bot, then don't waste your pre-ship time coding it.