New track #\'s!
Last night I went to the local 1/8th mile drag strip. It was 92 degrees, I had ½ a tank of fuel. I got there early around 6:45, popped the hood and let the car cool for a while. About thirty minutes later they started running. I checked my bottle pressure and it was still up around 1300 psi so I kept the hatch open to let it cool down a bit. In the meantime I watched my buddy run a 8.0@89mph in a renntech clk 60. That’s movin pretty good for a Mercedes!
Anyway so after he got back from that run I looked at my bottle pressure again. It was right at 1225psi. That’s a little high but I dyno tuned the car a little on the rich side so I said what the hell and pulled into the staging lanes. By the way, I am running Pirelli p-zero asymetrico 335-25-19 on the rear with 275-30-19 on the front @45psi last time I checked the pressure. These tires are harder than the stock pilot sports. I drive through the burn out box and started a brief burn out in 1st gear power braking it for about 5 seconds. I then flipped the nitrous switch and lit
them up with nitrous for a split second to get the line primed.
It was a solo run down the left lane. I staged, let the light drop, and got ready to launch at my convenience. I brought the revs up to about 2500 and let the clutch out more slowly than usual. The rear tires responded with a slight chirp and then a bog. The absolute second a felt the bog I pinned the gas engaging the nitrous. The car put every ounce of power it could muster right to the ground. I could hear the tires make that sticky sound like they were on the verge of going up in a cloud of smoke all the way through 1st gear. My 1-2 shift was perfect the car leapt forward once again as the nitrous engaged all the way to somewhere around 5500rpm (it went through the power band so quickly I couldn’t shift precisely at a certain point) when a made the 2-3 shift which was quite delayed for what seemed like a second but was probably only a tenth or two. There’s something about the thought of hitting the rev limited with a 150 shot engaged that doesn’t sit well with me so I always wait until I can feel 3rd gear engage before I hit the throttle again. So back to the story, I run third gear out through the finish line for what felt like a solid run. Slow down turn around and down the return road to get my ticket. I pull up to the ticket guy and he says “you can’t run anymore tonight.” I asked why not. “Cause you ran too fast you need to get a helmet.” He handed me my slip….. I ran a 7.190 @ 102.08mph!!! My 60’was a 1.814.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. My previous best run was a 7.548 @ 98.61. So I pulled back around and ran again. Similar run with a little more delay between shifts yielded a 7.263 @100.85 mph with a 1.799 60’!!!
I feel like there was a slight amount of room for improvement but this time I was kicked off the track. The track official came out and scolded me for running again. I never thought getting kicked off the track would feel so good!
The time I went to Carolina Dragway I ran an 11.69 @129.24. The cool thing is on that timeslip I ran a 7.766 @ 96.54 mph through the 1/8 mile to go on to an 11.69 through the ¼. With my new launch technique engaging nitrous in 1st instead of second and running a slightly higher bottle pressure which by the mph obviously produced more power, what do ya’ll think I could run through the ¼ now? If you are going to say this local 1/8th mile track may be faster than the ¼ mile track in Jackson it’s not. Using my old driving style and bottle pressure the best I could run at this track was a 7.90 vs. a 7.70 at Jackson. So assuming I could have extended this 7.19 run out to a ¼ mile what would the e.t. be? I think at least an 10.90 because I cut almost 6 tenths off of my 1/8 mile and that should translate to cutting more than 6 tenths off the ¼ mile time right?