Quote:
Originally Posted by Legit290
First time out ..relax. Dont put pressure on yourself. Dont worry about the guy in the other lane. Give the tyres a bit of a warm up with a little burnoit. When the tree drops, hit it on the last yellow. Traction control off.
Auto or manual? Probably mid 13's?
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My first time was 13 March at Sydney dragway. I had an experienced drag dude with me, so he helped with what we had to do (checking in, scrutineering, etc), and also with prep for the car.
Make sure all fluids are full - they help lubricate things and should stop anything messy from happening (like overheating gearbox etc, though it will only be 14 seconds of acceleration at a time max).
On the day, drop tyre pressure down to about 25 psi - this will depend on track temp though. On a 30 degree day, I was running 19s (275/35/19 and later 245/35/19) at 26psi and found that to be the best pressure to balance between grip and hopping off the line. I did one run at 23psi, and it just tramped off the line, which resulted in my slowest time of the day (only 0.4s between fastest and slowest though). You will need to experiment a little, but don't keep chasing pressures - once you find one that allows a good burnout, and lets you get off the line with minimal tyre spin, stick to that pressure.
Now, to get off the line fast, you need grip. On a dedicated drag strip, they put down sticky stuff which helps, but what helps more is heat in the tyres - not too much, but just enough. I was crap at doing burnouts at first (toop scared I might break something), but by about run # 8 of 12, I got them down pretty good. I turned TC/DSC off (hold button for 3 seconds) , left foot on brake and keep it there, and then right foot on go pedal - keep revs at around 4500rpm if you can, and once you see smoke out the back, keep it going for around 2 or 3 seconds, and slowly ease pressure off the brake to creep forward while generating the smoke for another 2 or 3 seconds.
In terms of launch - I didn't even bother stalling the ZF up. I put it in D most of the time and did left foot brake, right foot on go pedal, and when the third light went orange, left foot came up and right foot went down, and away we went. With hindsight, I could've stalled the auto up to about 2000 to 2500rpm for a quicker launch, but I didn't want to break anything at the time, so I just left from idle. I used perf mode a few times, but didn't find a lot of difference in ET - though fastest time of the day was in D in the morning with a fair burnout (not good, just fair). I didn't even try manual mode (doh!). The afternoon runs with the smaller tyres were better in Perf mode than D (but that's with better burnouts too).
I ran 12 passes. 6 @ 12.1xx, 3 @ 12.2xx, 2 @ 12.4xx (hint, don't change from D to Perf mode on a ZF halfway down the track - the bloody thing doesn't know what to do), and 1 @ 12.5 (too much axle tramp resulting in a 2s_ 60ft time, and you can't recover from that.
I also forgot to turn traction control off on one run - I pressed the button but didn't hold it. Guess what that did? Yep, cut engine power during the burnout, resulting in no burnout, and a funny sounding engine - I thought I'd broken something until I saw the DSC light flickering on the dash and then I put 2 + 2 together. The end run was a low 12.4 on effectively cold tyres.
Now, as for what tyres to use - my initial morning runs were on a set of used Kumho KU39s - quite a grippy tyre in dry and wet. I got my best time on these in the morning (12.127).
I also used Achilles ATRs - which are just OK in the dry, and awful in the wet, but when heated up with a decent butnout, gave as much grip as the Kumhos - the results were a best time of 12.178 on the ATRs
So unless you have a set of ET Streets or something, just run what you brung, and you'll do fine.
Sorry about the long post!