Glensgages

I have raced 3 times since October of 1993, so don't expect-much:
I'll begin with 'rolling-over', and 'fetching-a-stick', and work from there.....
:bb

jpee

Glen.. EXACTLY what I did 3 yr ago with my 19 sec Honda.. I was the Dumb Old Man in the stock 89 Tan 4 dr Civic.. I went as far as Renting a Track Helmet In the staging lanes.. I'd stand around my car looking stupid (normal to people who know me )

I swear I was watching the kids argue as to who would line up vs me in the first 3 rounds.... THEN by the 4th Rd They weren't quite so sure about me being a "duck"..but by that time we were on a ladder, & my opponent was testing me in the staging lanes..with questions like.. "Say how much have you raced?" I'd reply well I used to race my 1963 Chevy Impala when it was new... but took a few yr off until today so I'm a little rusty..

I wound up winning over $1000 cash + a set of Nitto Drag Radials.. the guy looked at me funny when I asked for 315x17... he said aren't they a little big for that Honda...

Glensgages

'bump' for the chuckster

REDGAR

Good job Glen

chuckster

Thanks for the Bump Glen!!! I just finally got around to reading this entire thread!! I cannot wait to get to Test and Tune and try some of this...

Too bad my car is on Jack Stands right now.. I have clutch issues...

Glensgages

..... then, THIS is the best-time to 'ask-questions, "think" , and-learn', so-that when the car is ready, you can implement this knowledge into results on-track.

cmb13

Man, I've got a lot to learn.

Glensgages

Fortunately, most of this is nothing-more than common-sense, thinking, paying-attention / attention-to-detail, and strategy:
prior-planning-prevents-****-poor-performance.

GreaseMonkey83

good thread.

like glen said, most of this stuff is common sense.
know your car, log your runs, make your predictions based off of your prior runs. it drives me crazy when i watch my buddies go out and drop 40 dollars to race and lose in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd round because they run off their dial. If your going to spend that kind of money to race, then spend the time and log your runs!! common sense. make sure you do EVERYTHING the same. burnouts, staging, shifting, etc. The more consistant YOU are, the more consistant your car will be.

once you have all of that down, youve won half the battle.. next you need to good reaction times. ill go ahead and hit on this one for a while since no one else really has yet.

in my opinion, reaction times are the most important thing in bracket racing. good reaction times are CONSISTANT reaction times, not low reaction times. a guy that can cut .650-.670 lights all night long will win more races than the guy that will cut a .580 light, then maybe a .600 and then a .5-teen light or maybe even a .5-oh light once in a while, but then back to a .620.
all the guy with the consistant .650-.670 lights has to do is change his car allittle to make it "pick up" .150 seconds then he'll be cutting consistant .500-.520 lights all night. Those are the guys that win meets, not just races.

Basically what im trying to say is- be consistant in the way you stage your car and cut your lights. the easiest way to do that is to pre-stage, then "bump" up untill you just barely set the stage bulb. next, stare a whole through the third amber and as soon as it comes on, GO. try not to anticipate the lights coming on, just stare at the bottom one and go when it lights up. if you can get all your reaction times all with in say .040, then you are in pretty good shape, now all youve got to do is adjust the car to make up for the time your off. so lets say your lights are between .580-.620, make adjustments to your car untill you pick up around .080 seconds. that can be done as easily as pumping your front tires up a few extra punds and giving you alittle less roll-out, or stalling your car up a few more rpms at the line. If your consistantly red lighting, do the oppisite.

whatever you do, i assure you, you will win more races if you can consistanty cut .500-.540 bulbs everytime you race. Its common sense

GreaseMonkey83

i guess i should go ahead and give you my take on bagging as well.

bagging is retarded. if your going to race someone and there is no doubt in your mind that they are bagging, then you will have an easy win. Dial up about 3 tenths on your predicted time and lay on the brakes about 2 car lenghts from the finish line and let him take the stripe. you will probably win on a "double break-out" unless you run way off your dial or cut a really bad light, which in that case.... you should have lost anyway.

i personally never bag. when you race, you should be racing yourself and the clock, not the guy in the next lane. Bracket racing is not about beating the guy next to you, its about beating yourself less than the guy next to you beats his self.

if your not sure if your opponent is bagging, just dial in what you think your car is going to run, if the guy is bagging, he will catch you well before you get to the finish line. just hold your car to the floor and run it out. the odds are in your favor, especially if you know your car and made an edjucated guess at what it will run.

like glen said, prior planning prevents poor performance.

cmb13

With bracket racing, however, you have to add your RT to your dial, right? For example, let's say I'm cutting a consistent 13.3. My average RT is 0.40. Should I dial at 13.7, figuring that it'll take that long to get from the start to the stripe?

I haven't been doing this. I've been dialing my average run, but then if my RT isn't good enough, I lose. I guess if I get a consistent RT and add it to the ET, then I'll expect to cross the line at my dial time.

Does this make sense?

mackeyred96

R/T has nothing to do with ET, you can't dial soft to make up for poor reaction time. But where dialing soft comes into play is if the track is bad and you are getting poor 60' times you can adjust for that.

GreaseMonkey83

yeah, reaction time has nothing to do with your et.

heres an easier way to look at it-- on a .500 tree, the best light you can possibly cut is a .500, if you dial a 13.40, the best time you can run is a 13.40. now, lets say your racing a car that is dialed in at a 14.40. If you run a a 13.45 and your reaction time is .580, that means you ran .050 off your dial and .080 off a perfect reaction time. add those two together and you get a .130 "package." What this means is that the guy your racing will have to put together a better "package" (.129 or smaller) in order to beat you. If he has a reaction time of .510 that means he was .010 off of a perfect reaction time, and if he runs a 14.51 on his 14.40 dial, that mean he ran .110 off of his dial. so you ad his reaction time and the time he was off his dial together and you get a .120 "package" which means he would have beaten you, even though he ran alot further off from his dial than you did. that is why good, consistant reaction times are so important in bracket racing.

mackeyred96

That's a given.

Glensgages

No.

RT is the amount of time (in thousandths-of-seconds, or .xxx ) after the Green bulb glows (or a ' - ' if before, which is a redlight/foul-start ) that the rear edge of your front tire 'clears' the Stage-beam:
at that exact instant, the ET-clocks begin, and they shut-off when the front edge of your front-tires break the finish-line beam, 1320' down-track.....

Think about that for a few minutes, and you'll realize that no-matter WHEN (in-relation to the tree being activated ) you mat-the-skinny, your car will only run a certain ET, if everything-else (atmospheric-conditions, head/tail-wind, traction, vehicle-weight, etc. ) remain constant:
in handicap-start / dial-in bracket racing, the tree doesn't ensure that the slower car gets a pre-determined head-start, but it 'offers' each driver the opportunity to minimize (if the quicker-car gets a better RT ), or maximize (if the slower has a better RT ) that advantage, or 'difference' in the dial-ins.

Watch this weekend's Pro Stock racing Sunday evening from Memphis on ESPN2, and you'll see what is called a 'hole-shot win', which is when a better driver wins with a slower car against a poorer racer with a quicker car.....
last week's Final Round was a perfect example of this:
Dave Connolly had a RT of .013, and an ET of 6.743, beating Jason Line's .052-initiated 6.737.

Connolly had an advantage of .039 off the line (his .013 from Line's .052 = .039 advantage ), and held-off Line, although Line ran .006-seconds quicker, for a MoV (Margin-of-Victory ) of .033-seconds:
think of it as 'Connolly's slower-but-sooner beat Line's quicker-but-later', and it may sink-in better for you.

Your dial-in is what the CAR will run, and has nothing to-do with your RT:
it is up to YOU to have the very-best RT you can every run, to maximize your chances of success & victory!

cmb13

Hold on a sec. Are you sure you don't factor the RT in? Let me give an example.

Example 1
Car 1: Average ET is 13.30, Average RT is 0.40. Dials 13.30, Has RT of 0.40 and ET of 13.30; crosses the finish line at 13.70 after his green, right?
Car 2: Average ET is 12.50, Average RT is 0.20. Dials 12.50, Has RT of 0.10 and ET of 12.50; crosses the finish line at 12.60 after his green.
Car 2 wins, right? They both had great runs, running their dial, but car 2's better RT gives him the win.

Example 2
Now, lets say Car 1 realizes he has a crappy RT, so he dials 13.65, has RT of 0.40, runs 13.30, crosses the finish line at 13.70 after his green, but now he wins, b/c he crossed the finish line first.

Is this not correct? If it is correct, wouldn't it be smart to add your expected ET to your RT to get your dial?

Example 3
Also, what happens if you dial 12.50, have a horrible RT of 1.00, but a run of 12.40. You cross the finish line 13.40 after your green. Does that make you break out?

Glensgages

..... couldn't have said it better myself!

In this hypothetical situation, car #1 has a 'package' (see-above ) of .45 (.40 from perfect RT, and .05-off his dial-in ), while car #2 has a package of .1, which is all RT (a .10 RT ), so car #2 wins again.

I believe you meant to post "12.40" , not 13.40.....

Yes, if you run quicker than your dial-in this is a 'break-out', or 'run-under', and you lose, unless your opponent runs further-under than you.

To make this a bit easier to understand, let's assume we have 2 identically-prepared cars, with identical-weight drivers, that both will run identical ETs in identical conditions, side-by-side, let's say they are 15-flat cars.....

If the car in the Left-lane has a RT that is .09-quicker than the car in the right-lane, if both drivers run *****-out to the stripe, the car in the Left-lane will win by .09-seconds, correct, by virtue of his .09-quicker RT?

Once this is understood, we also realize that the driver in the Left-lane can also 'scrub-off' up-to .089-seconds, by coasting, pacing, or 'fender-racing' his opponent, and still reach the stripe first by virtue of that better RT:
if the Left-lane driver has a .09-better RT, and runs all-out (15.000 ET ), the only way the driver in the Right-lane can reach the stripe first is to 'break-out' by .091 or-more, by running 14.909 (15.000 - .091 = 14.909 ), and dialing-in at 15.09 will in no-way help him win.

cmb13

Ok, I'm getting it.

In the above example, I did mean 13.40. To restate it, you're saying you break out if your ET is faster than your dial even if you have a very slow RT?

For example, if you dial 15.00, have a 2.00 second RT, run 14.00. You cross the finish line 16.00 seconds after green (light turns green, you sleep for 2 seconds, run for 14 seconds for a total of 16 seconds after green). The poor RT doesn't factor in to your ET, so the ET is 14.00, and therefore you still break out, even though you slept at the line and took 16 seconds from the time the tree turned green until you crossed the stripe.

Therefore, you cannot use a slow dial to compensate for a poor RT.

I guess mackeyred96 already said that What's is throwing me off here, and what prompted my examples above, are the following statements:

and

What I don't understand is how would consistant (consistantly bad) reaction times be good? If you can't dial them in, why in the world would a consistant 0.500 be good? It gives you a 1/2 second disadvantage over someone with a perfect RT.

Maybe where I'm losing this is the '0.500 tree'. Wtf does that mean? I thought the RT is the time from when the light turns green until you start moving forward. What am I missing here?

Glensgages

You can lose, even-if you have PERFECT Reaction Time, and break-out.....

Let's suppose we have identical dial-ins, and you have a perfect RT, but I am only .01-seconds behind you:
if you 'dialed-soft' (a few hundredths slower than what you honestly felt the car would run ), and keep the pedal on the floor in an effort to take the stripe, while I dialed-hard (a few hundredths lower than what I thought my car would run ), you stand a good-chance of running-under, and losing with a prefect RT, while I run a few hundredths off my dial-in, and win.

Keep this in-mind at all-times when trying to learn your way around bracket-racing:
when the light comes-on in your head, it will all become much-clearer!


Until about 10 years ago, NHRA, in their infinite (infantile? ) wisdom, based all RT-data from when the final Amber bulb glowed, and NOT when the Green bulb flashed:
a perfect RT was .500 (seconds after the final Amber ), and a .499-RT was just a thousandth too-quick.....

NOW, everything is based-on the Gren bulb glowing (.500 became .000, and .499 became -.001 ), but some of us 'old-timers' are so-used to thinking ".500 is perfect" , that we still 'speak' like that.


If you are 'consistently-bad', with emphasis on 'CONSISTENT', there are some things you may want to consider:
'deep-staging' is when you INTENTIONALLY let the car creep-forward when staging, until the Pre Stage bulb goes-out.

This places the rear-edge of the front tire much closer to the Stage beam, which triggers the RT clocks:
you'll need to CONSISTENTLY place the car exactly in the same place each time, but you should do that even-if you AREN'T deep-staging (consistency is THE key to winning rounds and races ), and most tracks will require you to place the word "DEEP" on all 4 windows.

*****NOTE*****

IF you try deep-staging, DON'T change the place on the Christmas Tree that you leave-on to 'compensate' for being closer to the Stage beam, or you will be defeating the purpose of creeping-in:
you will also notice that your ET will increase dramatically (slower ), but do-not be-alarmed, there is nothing 'wrong' with your car.....

This will be a result of having 'less-rollout', or 'rolling-start' (the back-edge of the tire is closer, and when you clear the Stage beam, your car will-not be traveling as-fast as staging with both bulbs lit ), but your finish-line MPH will remain the same as before:
with my stock '82 Cross-Fire, I cut .18-.21 lights, and run 15.00s, leaving 'regular' staged (both bulbs lit ), and deep-staged, I can get .07-.10 RTs, while the car 'only' runs 15.20s.

The .070s-at-best don't cut-it, so I rarely race the car:
if the 'deep-staging' concept seems confusing, feel-free to contact me via PM for more explanation.

Sincerely, Glen.

cmb13

Thanks for all the clarifications. Gotta spend more time rereading this thread when my 5 year old son stops bugging me to play with him.

It was the 0.500 RT, amber thing that really screwed me up, I guess.