I believe one of the most needed areas of improvement for many is staging. I will assume since this is the Drag Racing part of this site, that most of you that are interested in or want to try bracket racing have at least taken passes in your cars at PRP or some other track and that you understand the basic, burnout, stage, go, turnoff, time ticket procedure.
Staging...for bracket racing is much more complicated than rolling into the beams and lighting up both sets of prestage lights and going. There are 2 beams a stage beam and pre-stage beam. When you break the pre-stage beam the pre-stage bulbs light, you then have to roll 7 inches to light the stage bulb. If you roll 4.5 inches further the pre-stage beam will turn off, this is deep staging (I will cover that later).
I watch a lot of cars go down the race track. I am always amazed by how many racers just roll right in, and go. You will get MUCH more consistent E.T's and reaction times if you stage slowly and methodically. When you light the pre-stage beam, take a second and collect yourself and focus. Then you can begin to ease in to stage. I personally do the bump method when I am footbraking, I bring my RPM's up to 2500-3300 wherever I am that day, and then begin pumping the brake pedal just so the car moves ever so slightly, every time. I then bump just until the stage bulb barely turns on and stop there. Most likely I am an inch or less into the beam. This will get you quicker E.T.s and more consistent reaction times. The reason the e.t.s are quicker is that your tire has to move further before leaving the starting beam. This allows more of a "run" at the starting beam and the car in theory get a running start.
Deep staging (rolling in that extra 4.5 inches and turning off the pre-stage bulbs) will slow your e.t. about a .08-.1. It will also decrease your reaction time. The amount that it reduces your reaction time varies for each person. The reason that many do this is that their car reacts to slowly to consistently cut a light off the 3rd amber.
Questions about what I have just covered are more than welcome, anything that may need clarified. I typed it pretty quickly when I had a break here at school.
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00-bash
Originally Posted by NovaPRP
) if the tower saw brake light's before a win light, the person braking was disqualified. hope that clears that up.
and to think I thought I made it up.
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