First Time Drag Racing

[Tifosi42]

I finally made it to the drag strip. Numidia Dragway about 30 mins from where I live and I have been there several times to watch my good friend race his turbo integra, but this time I joined in the fun. Friday nights are street night bracket racing night at Numidia which are mostly comprised of older automatic muscle cars with some other stuff sprinkled in there. I raced in the street stick category which had an array of vehicles from a stock Honda Fit to a not so street legal fox body mustang. Thanks to my friends input I caught on quickly as to what I was supposed to do and when along with the goings on of drag racing.

Unfortunately the first two runs I completely forgot to turn the traction control off and bogged bad on the launches and thought my launch control was set too low. After figuring out that I forgot to turn off the traction control I had a lot better time. I got three practice runs in before the bracket racing started. To my surprise I made it through the first two rounds and was eliminated in the third round by a guy my friend says is there pretty much every week in an older camaro. Once I got it figured out I was fairly consistent, there was only one one thousandth difference between my fourth and fifth run.

A couple things that I learned about drag racing. Top mount intercoolers heat soak like a mofo, I saw BAT's at the start line in the 150's even with my hood open as much as possible during staging. I tried the water spray bottle on the intercooler before racing, but I am not sure if it even made any difference. I will be pursuing some WMI in the future for cooling purposes at the very least. The track has alcohol for $4.40/gal so that seems like it might be my best bet for getting some methanol. @Lex; at Stratified has provided a great OTS Flash tune because even with those high starting BAT's I still hardly saw much KR, 0.75 at most. Launching a front wheel drive car is difficult and definitely takes a lot of practice. The leaving part of drag racing seems to be the highly important part if not the most important part. FFS is badass and works like a charm. Mine is set at 5800 and I definitely think it made a difference for going down the track.

So I got 6 runs in and my best was 14.2 @ 103 mph. I was pretty happy with this as my goal was not really a time, but to run at least a 100 mph trap speed, which I thought was a reasonable goal. I was fairly consistent during the bracket portion of the racing, but was a tenth slower in the last round which saw my demise. I should add that I am on Goodyear Eagle F1 All-Season tires, so I'm sure that didn't help my cause, but year round daily driver in PA. The whole experience was a lot of fun and even though I won't be frequenting the drag strip every weekend I am definitely looking forward to going back and doing it again to try and be very consistent at the very least.

A couple of questions for those who do frequent the track. My launch control is set at 2500 with the aforementioned tires, what RPM do you launch at or had the best luck with. I seemed to spin then bog down and then come back into boost in first gear (not really ideal I don't suppose). Anyone running street tires air down at all? I have 225/40/18 tires and didn't really see a point in it, especially since all season. Any other input any experienced racers have would be well received.

Attached is the time slip from my best run of the night and picture of me beating a Boss 302 in the brackets, he missed 3rd gear, but I'll take it! Drag racing isn't boring when you actually participate!

[speedfreak44]

LC 3200 if at all. Get better at driving you wont care if the car has the feature or not. I hardly use mine. We don't need to build boost before launching a k04 car lol. If anything you would want boost reduction in 1st/2nd

[Lex]

Nice first time out.

Start without using LC as was suggested above. Hold the RPM between 3000-3500 RPM and feed in the clutch quickly but without dumping it and losing traction. Street tires are going to be difficult to launch at the track regardless and this will cost you the most in terms of E/T. You can air down a little bit but in the end a tire great for cornering with hard sidewalls will have a tendency to hop from a standstill.

BATs and IATs will play a huge role in power. Staging the car with an open air filter and a TMIC will greatly affect the run. WMI is a great step towards lowering BATs and trying to shield the intake from the engine bay is a good idea as well.

Letting the car cooling down between run with the hood open will help as well.

Good luck and really in the end the most important thing is seat time.