First Time Drag Racing

This past weekend I went to the drag strip for the first time. My brother and I went with a bunch of friends yesterday to Beaver Springs. We arrived there a little before 10am. The convoy to the tracked included my GST, an '06 Evo IX, and a trailered Camaro (not sure of any details about the car). After getting the Camaro off the trailer and unpacking a few things, we went and registered. It was a test and tune day so it was $37/car and as long as you signed a waiver, you could drive. So in our group we had 5 drivers - 2 for the Camaro, 2 for my GST, and one for the Evo. My brother was the other driver of my car. We went through tech inspection, which was the biggest joke ever. I'm not sure how other tracks tech cars, but this one included a 3 second look under the hood (which the inspector standing near my driver's mirror) and then writing my car number on and slapping a sticker on the windshield. That was it! He spend more time talking to me about putting in a seat support bar than actually teching my car!!! Since Eric (turbosax2) and I felt confident of our work, we knew everything was torqued/secured down and we couldn't think of any issues that we might encounter.

We had already gutted the car the previous nigh. My full car weight is 3010 with me in it and full interior. We weighed it last night after gutting the car (which just consisted of rear seat backs and cushion, spare tires, jack, wood floor and carpet, rear deck cover, and a few other odds and ends) and it was 2920 with me in it. And we planned on running with only a few gallons of gas in the car so it was probably under 2900 lbs at the track.

We drove back to our area and started to get ready to go. All I had to do was give the car a once-over and hook up the laptop. I rolled into the staging lanes and all of the things about staging, launching, shifting, etc. started flying through my head. It was hard to pick out the ones that I'd need to use first and focus on them. I got into the staging area and ended up deep staging the car on accident. I went with it anyway and pulled a 14.1 at 110. Not bad, considering another member on here predicted a 14.2 at 108 as my best. But, my goal was to get into the 13's. After that run, it didn't seem like it would be hard at all. But I was throwing a CEL (for knock above 3 counts) at the top of 3rd and all the way through 4th. This wasn't ideal, but it wasn't bad as I was only seeing about 3-4 counts. I got my time slip and went back to our area. Eric reviewed the log, made a few adjustments, and off I went. There weren't too many cars there so I could pretty much run as many as I wanted. I think the most I had to wait was a few minutes for a run.

My 2nd run brought out another problem. Beaver springs is not a flat track - at least not the staging area. My friend who was with us said it's all uphill slightly. So this time I made sure not to overshoot the staging lights. I staged fine, then let off the brakes so I could start my studderbox. Well, I rolled backwards out of the staging lights and only had the pre-staging ones lit. So, I figured out I have another issue of keeping my car staged. This run was an improvement and was a 13.8 at 108. When I picked up my ticket I got a warning that I needed a helmet next run. So I had to dig that out when I got back. I believe we turned up the boost 1-2 psi after this run.

Once again, I head back out. This time I was going to try and use my e-brake to hold me at the line since my clutch was being picky. Well, that was the last time I did that. I just don't have the mentality to throw down the e-brake when launching the car. I ran a 14.9 at 106. This was because I missed 3rd gear. When I got back to our area, I noticed a bit of smoke in the cabin after talking with Eric for a bit. I didn't think this was from burnouts because we were far enough away. So I popped the hood. Low and behold, I blew the dipstick out. I honestly never thought this would happen. So, we got to cleaning it up and rigged it so it wouldn't blow out again.

I headed up for my 4th run, but this was a bust again because of the sloped track. I rolled backwards completely out of staging somehow so I didn't get a time.

My last run was the best. We drained the pump 93 gas out and put in Sunoco 116 I fell in love with the stuff after the first run. I got the staging right (somehow, still not sure exactly what I did), didn't miss 3rd, and ran a 13.5 at 110.

We then took a break to clean up the engine bay some more as it was still spitting a bit of oil, eat lunch, and watch some other people run. There were about 3-4 good cars that were in the 10's (I think one might have broke into the 9's, but that was usually just for the Hayabusa).

Then Eric got behind the wheel and took 4 passes with a best of 14.3 at 110. He was just as confused with the staging problem as I was. He has a tendency of dropping the clutch too fast so he worked on this over the couple passes. It really didn't help though with trying new stuff to stage. Plus, his car is AWD so it's much different when launching.

So we got 9 runs in and easily could've gotten another 5+ in. I loved how empty the track was!! And I believe from lunch on there were more bikes than cars there.

Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions as to what may have caused the 3rd gear miss? It happened on more than half of the total number of runs and with both Eric and I. We are leading towards this being a hardware problem more than a driver problem, but you never know. It would just be weird of it happening that often and with two different drivers.

There was someone there with a dragster as well. My, that thing was beautiful. It was there before we got there and then had it idling outside of the trailer most of the time and were working on it. The first time on the track, it didn't do a burn out and didn't launch. It just pulled up to the line and gunned it. It spun a for a few hundred feet and then pretty much let out. It still managed a 11.1. Man, I wanted to see this thing go for it!! Well, it's next run, it looked like it was going to make a more aggressive pass. It backed into the water box and did a burnout about halfway down the track. Once it got back to the line and the lights went, it sat for a second or two and then hit it. It wasn't a full out launch, but was harder than the first run. You could see white smoke pouring out the exhaust for the minute it took off, so something didn't look good. And the way the exhaust was routed, it was dumping right in front of the tires. Well, it didn't even make it a few hundred feet and it started swerving (the back end was fishtailing). We thought he straightened it out, but he over compensated. Well, he tried to straighten that out and that was the end of his control. The back tires went towards the center of the track (he was in the left lane), the front tires into the grass, and it rolled about 3 times. In the process of rolling, the front was bent so that it wasn't even inline with the rest of the chassis. Luckily it landed on it's wheels. The driver wasn't hurt, but the car wasn't in too good of shape. They took a sawzall to the front half and put it in the trailer in 2 pieces. The engine didn't look too banged up, but the wing and body were dented up pretty badly. And he also didn't have anything leak/break on him which was lucky. Pretty much the only negative things was the body damage and having to cut off the front of the car (at least that I saw). So, a $75,000 car that we think only got to see 2 runs on the track. It looked brand new, and by the way they were working on it and driving it, my guess is that was the first time they had it out.

So, other than the non-level track and traction issues (only one of those I planned for), we had a good time. The Evo put down a 13.0, which is .5 better than what Mitsubishi says it should run, so he was happy. He was looking to break into the 12's, but that didn't happen. And the Camaro was slow and I don't remember it's best time (14's maybe?).

Attached Files

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