seniority as a factor in drive team decision

[Anupam Goli]

In the ideal world, we'd love to have our most talented students drive, regardless of age and class, but it's simply not possible at times for us. We can't send all of our underclassmen to our 1st regional this year because of the school system's liability rules when teachers take students on long distance trips. We only have one driver who would be covered under the school's insurance policy, and if we rent a van, we can only drive 15 students. Needless to say, we're a bit stretched out at competition, but due to our team's size, the 15 most important students to the operation go on the trip, and often times the students will be fulfilling multiple roles (drive team will be doing pit crew stuff, scouters may be in the pits, Coach might be scouting, etc.) so we need some experienced members to handle the immense amount of work to do with a smaller base of people.

[Tom Line]

We always have a primary drive team and a backup drive team. Generally speaking, I like to see it when the primary has the best driver, period. I do not want a senior on the backup drive team, because I expect the backup driver will be the future driver when the current one leaves.

That doesn't always work, and we haven't really followed it as a policy, but it's what I prefer to see.

[Aetas]

It seems like our team factors in a lot of things other than seniority, since we have had diverse drivers quite frequently. The thing is, it's usually whomever shows the most commitment. There's no use for someone with "raw talent" to be on the team as a primary driver if they cannot be counted on to show up. Regardless of this, the drivers with the most talent do seem to be the ones that are also seniors, due to commitment level and such by maturity.

So essentially, seniority is important on our team to an extent, but not necessarily the only thing.