First Time Ever at a Drag Strip, 12.4 @ 117.5 MPH

[Motor City Mad Man]

I took my Viper down to the drag strip for the first time today. I had never run on a dragstrip with any car before. I was at Milan Dragways in Michigan. My best run of the day was 12.4 @ 117.5 MPH with a 2.05 60 foot time and .76 reaction time. My very first run was 12.5 @116 MPH with a 2.05 60 foot time. I was running on the stock Michelin Pilot Sports. The track was slippery as hell. I could not get any traction and had to launch at about 1,000 RPM after awhile. I even had the rear tires set at about 22PSI. I was fishtailing all over the place. On the street I can launch at 2,000 RPM with no problem with no wheel spin. I have been practicing my launch on the street and using my G-tech. Do any of you guys drag race at Milan Dragways? I did my runs around 10-11:30 in the morning with the temp at about 70 degrees. At the worst I only had 1-2 groups of cars ahead of me at any time, so I got about 14 runs in. Didn't leave much time for the car to cool down though between runs as sometimes there was no wait at all. My worst run was about a 12.8, but I averaged about 12.6. I think the elevation here is about 900 ft. I only got beat in my ET once, by about .3 seconds with some guy that had slicks. Are these times ok for a first timer? This drag racing is fun!!!

P.S. I used my G-tech on about 10 of the runs and it is pretty accurate. My G-tech was showing a +/- .2 difference in the ET on average than I actually ran on the timeslip and about 5-10 MPH faster trap speed than my timeslips said. So on my 12.4 @117.5 per the timeslip, I ran a 12.32 @ 127.2 on the G-tech. My 2nd run of the day I ran a 12.08 @ 130 on my G-tech while spinning like hell thru first gear. I thought with that time I would be in the 11's, LOL, but the actual timeslip showed 12.5 @117 MPH. This G-tech is a fun an inexpensive toy. The times overall were pretty accurate, but seemed to be least accurate when I got a lot of wheel spin on my launch. My best 0-60 on the street with my stock street tires was 4.13 seconds on the G-tech Pro.

 

[treynor]

Those are good results -- congrats. I had very similar launch traction issues when running stock tires at the strip. My car made 438 RWHP / 485 ft/lbs at the time, and I ran 12.38 @ 117.3 before I started working on my shifting technique.

Next time you're out, concentrate on making your shifts as fast as possible without hammering the drivetrain. Your goal is to get into the next gear and get the cluch partially engaged *immediately* to keep motive power without spinning your tires or hammering the drivetrain. By making just that one change, I went from the above time to 12.06 @ 120, same day, same car, same track. You'll have to actively concentrate on making fast shifts, however.