12/27/2023 0 Comments Drag race car![]() Any idiot can mash their right foot (or their left, if they’re feeling particularly avant-garde) and drive in a straight line. Water + drag strip starting line = many people mad with you.Īlso, if you do find yourself spinning off the line, don’t immediately run to the burnout box before your next run – it might be something you can solve with technique.Ī key part of drag racing – and the bit that tends to need the most skill and practice – is the launch. Oh, and make sure you don’t bring any of that burnout water with you. We’re told that huge, heroic burnouts that go all the way past the start line impress exactly no one – the start line is prepared with an extraordinarily sticky liquid to aid traction, and your bits of flayed tyre will pretty much ruin that. Do a burnout until you feel the tyres regain grip, then let off the power immediately and roll forwards. Should you absolutely insist on doing a burnout, dip your driven wheels in the water, then drive just out of the puddle. Also, if you try to do a burnout in a moderately powerful car, you might not actually spin the wheels and instead send that power bouncing around your driveshafts, gearbox and diff, causing all sorts of fun things for your mechanic to sort out. Your road tyres won’t pick up anything like as much, so won’t need cleaning. ![]() The burnout before a race helps warm the tyres, yes, but it’s mostly to clean all the crap off to ensure a clean, even surface with maximum grip. Pro drag tyres are about as sticky as Australia’s Facebook predicament, so they pick up all the bits of rubber and detritus lying around the track. But don’t be put off by this – we’d recommend starting this way.ĭon’t worry about the burnout box to begin with – drive around it and get to the line. So, you’re likely going to turn up with something moderately powered, on street tyres. You’ll get a fraction more from the engine with it off, and you won’t drip water all over the start line, which will make you zero friends at the strip.Ĭonsidering you’re reading a how-to guide, we’re going to assume that you’re not already an NHRA-certified badass piloting a Top Fuel dragster. ![]() To start off with, a roadworthy car (that doesn’t drip anything), as well as sensible clothes and an approved helmet is generally all you’ll need, but that’ll run up to fire suits, harnesses, roll cages, HANS devices, racing fuel cells and parachutes as you start getting serious.Īlso, quick tip: turn off your air-conditioning before you roll up to the burnout bay. The faster that your drag car gets, the more you’ll need. It’s worth getting in touch with the people who run the drag strip you want to attend, in order to find out the cost of a day, what licence you need, what cars are allowed and which Pink Floyd album they think is the best one. You’ll only need a valid road driving licence, or, if you don’t have one (due to being a young’un, for instance), you’ll need a motorsport or competition licence. In most cases, you’ll find that the barrier for entry in drag racing is among the lowest in motorsport. If you want to compete, however, we’ve found that some form of car or motorcycle can be a big plus. Kind of the inverse of a Thomas Hardy novel.ĭrag strips have specially prepared surfaces for maximum grip, speed traps (that helpfully won’t earn you a summons from the Special Constable), supremely accurate timing gear, special burnout bays and an inspection area to make sure that your rig is safe to race.īut what will you need to turn up at a drag strip? Nothing, really – you can attend as a spectator, even without a car. So, racing down these is short, sharp and to the point. If you’re of a more metric disposition (hello, everywhere in the world except for England, USA, Liberia and Myanmar!), that’s roughly 200 metres or 400 metres. Drag strips tend to be of two lengths – an eighth of a mile or a quarter of a mile. So, this means that you’ll be at a drag strip. Unlike when you saw Cats and pretended that it wasn’t the worst thing ever committed to film. You might not be a responsible person, but the great thing is that if you pretend to be responsible, no one will ever know that you were faking the whole time. This place is not on the street, highway, overpass, underpass, forward pass or anywhere where a mistake on your part could end up breaking someone else’s body parts. At this stage, it seems pretty salient to point out that drag racing has a time and a place.
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