S A U N S W - Private Wsid Drag Racing Day

[N1GTR]

Is there any requirements like helmets or cams license?

Yep standard MOTORSPORT clothing required (I'll edit first post, I knew I'd forget something haha).

Rta licence is enough, cams and AASA are NOT needed for this place

[BeastVS]

Might come and take a look.

[gtr_scottie]

yeah i am up for it when do you have to pay by ? or is just 50 spots and thats it ?

[N1GTR]

Yes only 50 spots.

Forms are coming in already, so don't do what the Texi entrants do each time and wait/procrastinate then miss out when it goes full

[r32-25t]

Will pay and send my form on Thursday

[wizard]

I'm a definate starter, will make payment tomorrow.

Let's hope the weather plays it's part.

[bored33]

BOO YEAH!!

Paid and ready!! Ready to tow my car home that is....

[MrBlonde]

Drag Racing 101 for street cars

Kenny's ideas on drag racing a turbo street car like Skyline GTR:

I've assumed the following:

+ Turbo street car (not street/strip cars)

+ Street radial tyres with street rims (no front runners, etc)

+ Pump fuel

+ Manual transmission

Setup For Drag Racing - Weight Reduction

First setup you car before going to the strip.

Your first task is weight reduction. Ensure you get to the strip with 1/8th tank of fuel. That means allowing enough fuel to get there with 1/8th left. Better to arrive with too little fuel and then topping it up a tad from your jerry can, which is of course filled with the same unleaded fuel you have in your tank. A properly mixed slug of octane booster (or unleaded race fuel) will give you some peace of mind too. Remember to put the booster in first to allow the fuel to mix with it properly in the tank.

Next drain all the water out of your washer botle. My M Coupe takes 5 litres in the washer bottle which is 11 lbs you don't need.

Then remove the spare tyre, toolkits and anything else from your boot and from inside your car. Anything that can be eaily removed should go (CD Stackers, carpets, lose stuff, etc).

Now decide if you want to go to the trouble of removing your rear seats and passenger seat. Believe me when I tell you it will make a big difference. On average they say every 100 lbs is a tenth (0.1 off your ET).

Setup At The Strip - Tire Pressures

Now you've driven to the strip and been through scrutineering, get out your trusty pass journal and tire pressure gauge.

Ensure you've got 1/8th tank of fuel - you don't want to starve for petrol during a pass. Now hook up your compressor and increase your front tires to 55 psi. If you don't have access to a compressor then swing by the closest place to your drag strip and do this before you arrive at the strip.

You increase the pressure in your front tires to minimise rolling resistance. If you happened to have an alternate set of narrower wheels/tires then you'd fit the narrowest practical set for race day.

The rear tire pressure is more involved, because you've got to try a range of pressures and see what results in the best 60' times. The optimum setting changes as the weather conditions change, so this is a bit of a black art. That's what your Pass Journal is all about. This is where you record your car setup and the results after each run. That way you can make changes one at a time and make some sort of analysis in order to optimise your setup.

Generally speaking you should drop your rear tire pressure 4 psi from standard and then work your way down by half a psi at a time until your 60' times get worse.

Remember that fine adjustments on street radials is less of a factor than when you graduate to drag radials or slicks. However it is still well worth your while to get close to the optimium.

Your Pass Journal will have an entry for every pass you do, including the following information as a minimum:

+ Tire pressure

+ Launch RPM

+ 60' result

+ My comments

More on how to use your Pass Journal seek the optimum setup in a later post.

The Burnout - How Long?

If you are a beginner or feel a bit nervous about the upcoming pass, then simply drive around or through the water box and don't worry about a burnout. You can add the burnout to your later passes as you become more comfortable.

Remember that street cars using street radials are very different to a Top Doorslammer. You're not going to do a half track burnout and wow the crowd. Street cars that do long pointless burnouts are basically wasting everyone's time. Don't be one of them!

Now street radials like a touch of heat in them to get optimum traction. But too much heat and their traction is reduced. However if you don't spin the tires at all then you've still got some water and grit on your tires from the water box (unless you managed to drive around it).

My advice for street radials is to drive through the water box and come to a halt. When signalled by the official, dial up the revs and drop the clutch. Wait until your tires smoke a tad and then button off. We're talking less than a 2 second burnout here. More than that and you risk cooking the rubber (ie reducing traction until they cool).

Realise that drag radials and slicks are made totally differently to street radials. These special tires require a lot more heat to work. Street radials don't.

The Burnout - How To Do One?

Now you know how long to let the burnout go for, exactly how do you perform a decent burnout?

Let's start from standstill, waiting for the official to motion you to start your burnout. Select the appropriate gear (1st, 2nd or 3rd depending on your horsepower, the higher the gear the more power required to turn the tyres over). When the official signals to start your burnout, dial in some revs and drop the clutch. You can dance your left foot over to touch the brake a tad and balance the revs via throttle with forward movement via brake (takes a bit of practice).

Now if you continue to creep forward and start to contact your tires with dry sticky track then you're obviously going to put more strain on your driveline.

When you've got some heat into the tires, just let off the brake and /or drop revs a tad and your car will creep forward. Get off the gas and allow the car to roll gently towards the staging lights.

How To Pre-Stage

You're rolling gently towards the staging lights. Keep your eyes on the Christmas Tree and look for the White Pre-Stage light to blink on. The instant you see this light come on you nail the brakes and come to a total halt. You're not yet fully staged - just pre-staged. The second Full Stage light is still unlit.

I recommend you now wait until your opponent is at least Pre-Staged or even on Full Stage before you bump in to Full Stage. Once either competitor is on Full Stage, the other racer has only 20 seconds to fully stage or the starter may disqualify you. In practice at a street meet the starter will rarely disqualify you, but they may come over and bang on your side window to hint that you're holding things up!

Once you are pre-staged you must now focus on that Full Stage light with all your concentration. Because as soon as you fully stage, the starter can trigger the Christmas Tree at any time.

How To Bump On To Full Stage

You're at a halt with the Pre-Stage light up and your competitor is fully staged.

Now apply your handbrake gently and dial up your pre-determined launch RPMs. You've already thought about what RPM you're going to launch at before you lined up. If this is your first pass, then just choose whatever starting point you think appropriate.

Your clutch is in, your RPMs are steady at your launch point and your handbrake is slightly on. Now you ever so gently tease your clutch out - looking for the friction point where the RPMs start to dip showing you the clutch is dragging your engine just slightly.

With your hand you are holding the handbrake just slightly on. This is a delicate balancing act, ensuring your engine is at launch RPMs, your car rolls forward ever so slightly and your rear brakes are just slightly on to ensure you move very very slowly on to Full Stage.

This is called bumping on to Full Stage and is not easy to do. If you roll forward too far you will Redlight by crossing over the start beam. No big deal, it's all practice and you'll do better next time.

Once you bump on to Full Stage you pull your handbrake up firm so your car comes to a dead stop. But you don't allow the handbrake to ratchet on lock, you keep it on but not locked by pressing the button as you hold it.

If you get it right you will find yourself fully staged, motionless on the start line and most importantly, you are solidly locked on your launch RPMs with your clutch just at friction point, dragging against your handbrake.

You are not looking at your tacho to check your RPMs. You are not looking at your handbrake. You are not looking at anything other than the Christmas tree.

The Launch

It's been covered in detail in many other places so I'll just state it here. Because of human reaction time and because of the vehicle reaction time of your car's suspension and drivetrain, you do not launch when you see the Green light on the Christmas Tree. You launch the instant you see the last of the three Amber lights come on.

Option One

You're at steady launch RPMs with the clutch at friction point and the handbrake held on but not locked. As you see the last Amber come on, you release the handbrake fully (holding the button in) and flatten the gas while modulating your drivetrain using your clutch. Because you're launching a turbo car you flatten the gas. On an NA car you wouldn't do that.

Option Two

You've got your handbrake held on but not locked. You pulse your gas pedal so your RPMs peak at redline and drop slightly but stay in the power band of your engine (revving your engine quite hard). As you see the last Amber come on, you release the handbrake fully (holding the button in) and flatten the gas while modulating your drivetrain using your clutch. This is your attempt to build some boost off the line. Negatives are it's harder to get a consistent launch. Up to you - maybe try it both ways and see what you prefer.

Whichever option you choose this is not easy to do and takes many repetitions to get a good result. This is where it's all at - your reaction time versus your opponent and how well you can launch your car without wheelspinning.

You must slip your clutch mercilessly to get an optimum launch. Sometimes you may find you have not let the clutch out fully before it is time to change up a gear. This is OK.

Wheelspin on launch or upshift will cost you precious time. The optimum launch is at 10% wheelspin. This is very difficult to achieve and again comes only with much practice and experience. It's all good!

Yes, you will punish your clutch. Yes, it will give off that awful smell of tortured components. Yes - it is the only way to optimise your launch.

Clutches are consumables and are meant to be replaced. Regular drag racing will severely shorten the life of your clutch, but so what? You replace the clutch and go on your way. Just like tyres.

[MrBlonde]

Part 2

Getting A Better Time

Your reaction time (RT) is all about how quickly you react on the start line. It does not factor into your ET at all. However the winner of each race is very much affected by the RT. So once you are comfortable with the process of doing the burnout, launching and shifting up through the gears I recommend you treat each pass like it's a race. The only way to get better is to practice like you race.

Drag racing is all in the launch. Every tenth (0.1 second) reduction in your 60' time is .15 to .25 reduction in your ET.

You can beat an opponent with a much more powerful car by getting a sharp RT and by getting a sweet launch.

Using Your Pass Journal

After each pass I recommend you drive back to the pits after collecting your timeslip. Get out of your car and get your Pass Journal out.

Now note down the vital pieces of information about the pass:

+ Launch RPMs: (eg 4500 RPM)

+ Tire Pressure: (eg 28 psi)

+ 60' time: (eg 2.150 seconds)

+ My comments: (eg Car bogged down, need RPMs)

Sometimes you can easily tell what you did wrong - too few RPMs on launch and you bog down. Too many RPMs and you get wheelspin or wheel hop.

Sometimes you have to use your 60' times to help you work out what's going on.

The important thing to remember is to only change one thing at a time. Otherwise you have no idea which of the changes you made created the different result, not to mention that the combination of changes hopelessly confuses things.

I recommend you start with your launch RPMs and keep your tire pressure at your standard setting (ie what you run on the street).

The rule of thumb is that you want to launch at your peak torque figure. Now this is not so easy to find, because as you launch your engine and drivetrain slow as the load comes on. So you have to launch at an RPM level higher than your engine's peak torque, so that as the load comes on then you are at your peak torque.

In practice, pick a fairly low launch RPM .. say 2000 RPM, and then bump it up 500 RPM at a time. Keep doing this until you get hopeless wheelspin on the launch. Then drop the launch RPM down by 250 RPM and try again. You're doing a sort of chop sort by way of hitting on the optimum launch RPMs.

And how are you evaluating what is a good launch? By examining your 60' times after each pass. You soon note that wheelspin or wheel hop means a shitty 60' time and that bogging down results in a shitty 60' time, too. But sometimes it all goes right and you get a stormer!

Before too long you'll have a good idea of the RPM band your car best likes on that day. Remember that different weather conditions will change what your car wants, but it will only change so far.

Let's say you finally settle on 3750 RPM as the best launch, the one at which you consistently get the best 60' times. Now it's time to fiddle with the tire pressures. So you dial in every pass at 3750 RPM and then you adjust your rear tire pressure down by 0.5 psi each pass until you again notice your 60' times get worse.

You should notice that the 60' times improve for a while and then get worse again. In any circumstance, you don't want to go much below say 10-12 psi less than recommended; that can be dangerous.

Once you've done this analysis you will have an optimum launch RPM and an optimum tire pressure for that day.

Now you will find that the optimum tire pressure will allow you to launch at a higher RPM! So you start the trial and error analysis all over again. Of course, for each pass you pre-determine what the launch RPMs will be so there's no thinking on the start line. And you record all your results in your pass journal when you get back. A pass journal may sound fancy but I use the back of a scrap of paper usually - whatever you prefer.

Also don't forget to factor in your improvement as a racer. Your first passes will be crappy compared to your most recently passes as you get the hang of it all.

It's all good fun! And it doesn't matter if you've got the most powerful car in the world or a stocker, the thrill of drag racing is there for everyone.

A good racer can beat an opponent with much less hardware at his or her disposal using the techniques listed above. And it doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile ... winning is winning ;-)

[MrBlonde]

For street/strip cars

Kenny's ideas on drag racing a turbo street/strip car.

I've assumed the following:

+ Turbo street/strip car (not racecar)

+ Drag Radials or Drag Slicks

+ Racing fuel (like C16 or VP109)

+ Manual transmission

+ Line locker

+ Racing clutch

+ Boost controller

Setup At The Strip - Tyre Pressures

Set the pressure in your front runners to the maximum allowable (say 55 psi). Then forget them. (Not if you are running AWD).

Cars over 3000 lbs are considered a heavy car by drag racing standards. There are special slick compounds for cars over 3000 lbs (most of us).

I'd recommend starting with 18 psi and varying to see what gets you the best short time.

Remember small slicks need more air in them, especially with high power sedans. Don't listen to knuckle draggers who argue for 6psi. That's fine in their 2000 lb dragster with 33"x17" slicks at 300 MPH in the top end!

The Burnout - How Long?

Drag Radials (eg Mickey Thompson ET Street) require two hard burnouts to get up to heat. After tha a quick burnout before each pass.

Drag Slicks require one hard burnout at the start of the night, followed by a light burnout each time.

For a hard burnout wait until you can see the rubber hazing and then button off.

The Burnout - How To Do One?

Select 3rd gear with your rubber in the waterbox. Now pump up your brakes and activate your line locker (if you have a brake pressure guage you're aiming for 2000 psi).

If you are running a twostep activate it now in burnout mode.

Fully press the gas pedal down and wait until you hit the two step, then step off the clutch while keeping the line locker activated.

When you see the rubber hazing, deactivate the line locker and allow the RPMs to drop, then button off.

Stage immediately while the rubber is sticky.

How To Bump On To Full Stage

Creep into Pre-Stage. Pump up your brakes to about 300-400 psi on the brake pressure gauge. Activate your line locker.

If you are running a two step activate it now in launch mode. If you're running anti-lag activate it now.

With the line locker on, dial up some RPMs and slip the clutch out a little so the car is pulling against the brakes. This way you can very precisely bump in to full stage.

Once in full stage clutch in and floor the gas pedal. You are now bouncing off your twostep limit and antilag is popping away nicely.

The Launch

When you see the last amber light drop the line locker and step off the clutch in one motion. Start shifting fast!

At the Stripe

Stay into it for one-one-thousand-two-one-thousand after you think you've crossed the stripe. That's to make sure you actually have crossed the finish line before you button off.

Stay into the gas as you trip your parachute and wait until it's deployed, then button off and slip your tranimission into neutral. Let the 'chute kill most of your speed and then ease on the brakes slowly and gently.

If You Break

If something lets go then it's usually at the start line. Immediately drive off the race line towards the sidewall and stop as quickly as possible. That reduces the cleanup time for the track officials if you're dropping any fluids onto the race surface. They will like you a lot more if you remember to do this.

If the Car Gets Loose

When deciding to stay in it, click up a gear or button off ... button off!

[N1GTR]

Hey guys im just wondering why the 10.99 become a spectator.I really want to bring mine out but i will be siiting out on the first run.LOL.

What sort of times do you do?

Yeah sorry we have to abide by their time rules, otherwise we'd be able to bring along some huge GTR's

[MrBlonde]

Is there any requirements like helmets or cams license?

You need a helmet. You need EITHER an ANDRA race licence or an RTA licence. The RTA licence does not have to be current (ie you can have lost your licence).

You need footwear with covered toes and a long sleeve top and trousers.

[Duncan]

Excellent posts Kenny, lots of good exerience has gone into those

[MrBlonde]

What sort of times do you do?

Yeah sorry we have to abide by their time rules, otherwise we'd be able to bring along some huge GTR's

Steve, the 10.999 cutoff is a WSID regulation (ie not ANDRA).

WSID also offer a different private day package for sedans quicker than 11.000 but the numbers are limited (I think to 8 vehicles) and they frequently enforce a one lane only rule. That means you can't run head to head either.

The stated reason is to avoid this sort of private track day competing with an ANDRA test and tune day. I'm hoping that recent changes in WSID management might see some of these decisions revisited in time!

The complicating factor with cars quicker than 11.000 is that ANDRA considers them to be race cars. If you run 10.999 or quicker then there are a bunch of ANDRA technical rules you need to adhere to (like roll cage, wheel studs, arm restraints ,etc). But the real hassle is that sedans 140MPH or faster must be seen to deploy their parachute on every pass. So then you need a tender vehicle. And you can imagine the chaos at a street meet with tender vehicles!

[MrBlonde]

Excellent posts Kenny, lots of good exerience has gone into those

Duncan happy to help out if I can mate. I remember the first few times I turned up to a drag racing meeting. The track and ANDRA officials tell you f**k all and often treat you like a retard when they can see you aren't sure what to do. It's stupid really, if you want a sport to grow then you need fresh blood. The quickest way to turn a potential newbie off is to treat them like shit!

It really is a simple process once you've got your head around it but a friendly helping hand for newbies would go a LONG way to making things more enjoyable.

[zebra]

Duncan happy to help out if I can mate. I remember the first few times I turned up to a drag racing meeting. The track and ANDRA officials tell you f**k all and often treat you like a retard when they can see you aren't sure what to do. It's stupid really, if you want a sport to grow then you need fresh blood. The quickest way to turn a potential newbie off is to treat them like shit!

It really is a simple process once you've got your head around it but a friendly helping hand for newbies would go a LONG way to making things more enjoyable.

You should try the guys at willowbank, make some of the WSID guys seem like angels haha.

[zebra]

Also just to add to Kenny's posts.

You dont HAVE to leave on the last amber light, the timing doesnt start until you break the stageing beams, so you can sit there and get your RPM right and get settled in the car, obviously dont sit there for too long or they will red light you.

However when the adrenalin is pumping and you want to beat the guy in the other lane. drop that clutch as soon as the last amber light flicks on.

Also does WSID still run the old style reaction times (0.400 being perfect) or the new way (0.000 being perfect)?

[NXTIME]

Sydney Dragway uses the 0.000 reaction times as the perfect time (which equate to an actual 0.400 RT). Anything less (<0.000) is a redlight (ie <0.400 actual RT).

Non of the above has an effect on your ET. It only matters in determining who wins the race.

[Victory]

Not going to miss out on this one - money paid and entry forms emailed.

First opportunity for Clinton and me to give the new car a run.

Excellent posts Kenny - as a drag newbie all the advice we can get is appreciated.

[MaTBoY]

Hey guys im just wondering why the 10.99 become a spectator.I really want to bring mine out but i will be siiting out on the first run.LOL.

What car do you have that's going to run a 10.99? Pics or Ban.

I'd be very impressed if it got there....