Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 11:47:41 -0500
From: Robert Trottmann <rotrottmann@davidson.edu>
Subject: DML: 1/4 Mile Times vs Speeds
I was just looking over my little paper prizes from last night and
realized that my times varied between a worst of 14.848, to a best of
14.679, but my speeds only varied from 91.55 to 91.87. Is this some
evil trick by the coefficient of friction gods or what? When I ran a
15.076 it was at 90.10....shouldn't there be more variation?
Just wonderin'
Robert
-- What you see is the inconsistency of your launches. Are the 60' times about as varied? A little slippage will make a change in the ET, but not that much in the mph. If you were to get big variances in your MPH I would wonder if you had a problem somewhere. Your MPH is only taken as an average of the last 60 feet. So by the end of the 1/4, unless you had an awfully bad launch, the HP of the engine is pulling the truck along at just about the same MPH most of the time. The whole thing of saying if you run this ET you should run this MPH is grossly overrated. Those are generic guestimates probably based on the performance of a small block Chevy. Our 455 Buick Regal would run 10.20's all day long. Many computer ET predictors said we should be running about 135 or so. Fastest MPH was 129.8. The Buick made gobs of torque to launch that obese 3500lb car, but would run out of steam at about 6000. Trucks are very front heavy, so they inherently have a difficult time hooking up consistently. If you want to seriously bracket race, you've got to get consistent launches and ET's.Sorry about the long post, but from 93 until 97 we raced that Buick sometimes 3 nights a week. I love bracket racing. I think it and SCCA Solo racing are the last forms of racing the average Joe can afford.
Drew Schofield Visit my web page at http://www.angelfire.com/tn/page4drew
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