FRC Qual Rounds on Thursday @ Championship

[Jon Jack]

I can see good and bad things about Thursday qualification matches...

The good: More qualification matches. The 3 1/2 hours should yield 1-2 more matches per team.

The bad: Less time to make changes to your robot prior to inspection and less time to inspect.

I like the idea of more qualification matches. Having only 7 qualification matches will not produce an accurate ranking of ~80 teams.

However, my fear is that teams that are not prepared will not pass inspection. As a result the Thursday qualification matches will have no shows and will bring down the quality of the event.

I'm also afraid that FIRST is underestimating the amount of time it will take to inspect 380-something teams. Last year it took us over an hour to go through inspection. Granted, changes can be made to the inspection process to speed things up... Let just hope FIRST makes those changes.