Hello to drag racing gurus,

My very first time on any track in any car, I managed to pull a best of 14.2 at 98mph in my Z at Englishtown. The weater was 90F with 80% humidity so lots of cars were running slower than usual. But I just thought there had to be a way to lower my 60ft times because everything else seemed near perfect.

My R/T was mostly below 0.1, but I just couldn't seem to get my 60ft down at all. I tried 20psi, then 17.5 psi, small burnout, big burnout etc. My best 60ft time was at 17.5psi with small burnout and it was still a whopping 2.35s!!! The other times I was around 2.4. I have 275mm BF Goodrich KDW1s in the rear and I tried launching at 3K, then at 2800 and finally at 2500 and had nothing but wheel spin all first gear and half of 2nd at best. Any recommendations? I just want to break into 13s on street tires. Thanks in advance.

Car is a 6spd and just has an intake. Weight without spare and tools but with me in it was 3400 even (I weigh 205 with clothes).

 

Certain factors would play into the 60'. Some external factors that can affect the 60': treads, preping of the track, tire pressure. You can try starting @ 2,000 RPMS and slip the clutch out while proportionally adding gas, you shouldn't be wheelspining with such a low RPM take off. A good launch will generally have minimal wheelspin (in some cases none) on street tires.

I've tried launching at 2000 RPMS (tire pressure set at 30PSI on Eagle F1's GS-D3 235/50/17) and was able to get at least 2.1 60's, California Speedway really doen't prep its launch pads well and anything higher than 2500 RPMs just results in wheelspin on street tires. I'm assuming Englishtown has about the same track prep as California Speedway.

I've been told that you only need to make a short burn-out with street tires to clean the tires (like a 1 second spin), anything longer would cause the street tires to "glaze" and cause worse traction.

 

25 PSI, no less. You are hurting yourself even with 20. These aren't DR's or Slicks we're talking about here...I cut a 1.9 60' on stock tires with 25 PSI. I tested all in the area around 25, a little below, a little above on the same track conditions...25 is the magic number it seems.

 

Awesome recommendations.. I'll try that and report back this weekend. I think the problem was both too low of a tire pressure at 18-20 and too much of a burnout. Because I did see the best 60ft time with the smallest burn out I did. My 98mph trap speed might be a result of too low of tire pressure as well, I'll see if I can break 100mph this weekend.

Thanks a lot for your help guys.

 

On the subject of burnouts, I see no problem with them, all you're doing is possibly picking up other people's rubber, hence making your tires stickier...I did a good 10 second or so burnout every time and I cut 2.0's all day and a single 1.9 on stockers...