Doug, I think what Laura meant is that having a driver who can shift and clutch well, and who can do this consistently, will do more for the car's quarter-mile times than a few extra horsepower would.

Nope. She's talking about bracket racing. (For the races you have to dial-in what you think your car will run and be as close to those #'s as you can.) Also, Laura runs an automatic transmission in her Nova. (...I want to adjust the shift point of the automatic tranny.)

As Chuck Yeager likes to say, "It's not the machine, it's the man." And Chuck Yeager obviously never went drag racing! In the top classes, the drivers don't shift at all -- they run the full quarater mile in one gear. They don't even clutch -- the clutch engagement is automatic, but not the way you'd think. The clutch consists of a multi-disk clutch pack that engages progressively through very complex mechanical/pneumatic linkages (electronics not allowed in top fuel and funny car) so the credit for a good start goes both to the driver who starts the clutch engagement the instant the light goes green, and just as much to the crew chief who sets the clutch up to get exactly the right amount of wheelspin for the entire length of the track: too much and you're up in smoke, too little and you're giving up acceleration. The clutch setup will vary depending on the temperature, the humidity, the track surface (which is likely to be different out of the "box" than further down the track) and even how many cars have run before you thus laying down rubber (or, worse, oil) and changing the traction characteristics of the track.

This is why guys like John Force spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a top of the line drag racer. For something that appears as brutally simple as a Funny Car, there are an astounding number of variables involved in setting it up for competition, in the end it really is the machine, not the man that wins the race. (OK, assuming some parity in driving skill. Take the 16 qualifiers in a national meet, and there's a good chance the slowest qualifier would win the meet if he could take over the fastest qualifier's car.)

That's not to say there is not considerable skill involved. Imagine driving a top fuel car at 300 miles per hour with steering that is less than one turn lock to lock and so much noise and vibration that your vision is blurred, having to stay within a 40 foot wide lane, ready to lift and then re-apply throttle instantly should the rear wheels break loose... and in the bracket clases, having to nail your starts exactly, not panic when your competitor starts out three seconds ahead of you, shift at precisely the same RPM each time and re-apply the clutch exactly the same (all pretty much as you described above, actually...)

Am I boring people with these discourses on drag racing? Probably most of you know all this stuff already... but since it's one of the few topics I know anything about, I like to talk about it. Say the word and I'll shut up and go away....

tanstaafl.





"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"