Next sunday I'm heading out to lapeer dragway to watch and participate in some racing. Anyway this is my first time participating and was wondering what tools are recomended to bring? Any tips or recomendations? I'm bringing a timing light, extra springs and weights for the dist, holley jet pack & spring kit, mech sec carb, carb spacer, and some sockets and wrenches. I'll be participating in the 1/8 mile bracket racing. Would getting some race gas be a good idea? I'm a newb so any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Jeramie
Jeramie, The key to bracket racing is consistency. If your car is already tuned and running well, I wouldn't mess with anything that will effect ET from one run to the next. All you should be concentrating on is learning how to cut a good RT and making sure you're consistent. This may mean leaving it in Drive, even though it won't give you the best times. If traction is an issue - fix it. Other than that, don't mess with anything that will hurt your chances of going rounds. The key is to run the same number pass after pass (after pass). Once you can do that, focus on getting your reaction times consistent and in the .0XX's. Regardless of your ET, if you can run the same number and cut lights consistently below .050, you'll be hard to beat in your standard bracket race. Don't go into the water box if you're running standard street tires and don't have traction issues. You may want to do a light powerbrake to clean the garbage off your tires, but anything more than that likely won't help your traction. Once you're full staged, move your focus onto the last amber light. Ignore the rest. You truly want to "react" to this light. You do NOT want to try and anticipate the green. For your first time trial runs, launch right when that last amber comes on. If you red light, you may want to stage a bit shallower, or find a way to mentally delay the launch a bit. If you're still running .1XX RT's or worse, you may want to stage a bit deeper. Remember, we're only talking inches here when it comes to deeper or shallower - not half feet. I usually try to just bump the staging light on, and work from there. If my RT is too slow, I'll bump in a little deeper. If I'm leaving to early, then I may go deeper and launch between the second and third amber. It's really something that takes practice. But my advice to you is to not mess with anything on the motor that isn't broken. So what if it isn't as fast as you hoped? Fix that on a day where you can't be eliminated or break out. If you find yourself at the top end, during eliminations, and the other car is a ways back, don't shotgun the brakes. I recommend having your left foot hover over the brake pedal and use moderate pressure to slow down, while keeping your right foot on the floor. It doesn't take a lot of brake to cut a few hundredths off your ET. But it takes a miracle to go from gas to brake to gas, when you find out the other guy is coming stronger than you realized. Don't play any games like sandbagging, etc... Dial what you think it will run and try to run that number. If your time trials are during the heat of the day and your elim's are at night, you may want to lower your dial-in by a couple hundredths to correct for the more power to be had with cooler air.
