Thanks to all the drag racers out there who are weighing in on this issue.
We should be renting the strip at the Virginia Motorsports Park at this Pro
anyway...
However...Pro Solo lights and protocol have very little to do with drag
racing. Each competitor doesn't even care if the other driver is staged.
It has nothing to do with them. When the pair of drivers in front of you
leaves, the 25 second 'shot clock' starts down. When that 25 seconds is
up, you are EXPECTED to be staged. 3-5 seconds later (manual activation)
the tree starts coming down (3 yellows and a green). When the tree starts
coming down, you are REQUIRED to be staged or your run is a DNF. There is
no waiting, mind games or jockeying at the stage lights. You have a finite
amount of time to get in and get ready or you lose your run.
I agree with you about the deep staging. Nobody deep stages in Pro Solo.
The technique, as you have stated, is to stage a shallow as possible. So
if nobody deep stages, then the PS light is really not neccesary...right?
For those who haven't done Pro's, I feel reaction time is even more
critical in Pro Solo that at the strip (although we all know it is critical
there too). Why? Because unlike at the strip, your time starts when the
light goes green, not when you break the start beam.
AB
As a lifelong dragracer I feel compelled to comment on the staging issue
here. The prestage light has a couple of functions, one of which was
already mentioned: letting the competitor know that you are in a
position to stage your car. The act of getting both cars prestaged
before either rolls into the staging beams is pretty much common
courtesy among racers that don't have personal problems with each other
<G>. It's up to the starter to police the staging and waiting
activities of the racers (10 second rules and such).
The other function is to let YOU know that you are some fixed distance
from the staging beams. This is actually more important than it seems
on the surface and I will explain it in a long winded way:
On the dragstrip, the course is exactly 1320 (or 660) feet long and the
race is measured in thousandths of a second. The staging beam is
typically an infrared pencil diameter beam about 2 inches above the
surface of the track. What happens when the car is launched is that it
starts moving long before the beam 'connects' starting the ET (elapsed
time) timer and stopping the RT (reaction time) timer (which started
when the signal to light the green bulb was sent). In fact, the car has
to move the distance of it's rollout to start the ET timer unless it
jerks the tires straight up out of the beams. So, the deeper you roll
into the staging beam, the shorter your rollout will be and the less
velocity you will have when it starts the ET timer. Hence a slower ET
than if you had staged as shallow as possible. Also, the deeper you are
staged, the later you can launch your car because of that short
rollout. With the prestage bulbs, the entire process of staging the car
is greatly speeded up. All forward motion. You drive into the prestage
beam and stop. Doesn't matter how far in you went unless you lit the
stage bulb. Then, you can inch up until you are just barely into the
stage beam. It takes years of practice to get this act down very well.
My dragrace car is set up to do it easily, where it is a PITA in a
street car. It's also important to be the same distance into the beams
so that when you start 'nailing the tree', you don't redlight because of
the short rollout.
What does this have to do with Pro Solo? Well, I assume that from what
has been written so far that there is a start beam similar to the
dragracing setup. I have never seen it since I have just started racing
Solo2 and we have a rolling start with the timer beam out a few feet. I
view a run through the cones as a dragrace with corners. Every
thousandth of a second counts and if you are running a dragrace style
launch, it behooves you to stage as shallow as possible so you can
launch as soon as possible without getting a redlight. The sooner you
can get speed built up, the faster your run will ultimately be. A very
high percentage of dragraces are lost on the launch (reaction time) and
I would be willing to bet money that a lot of Pro Solo runs could be
improved by working on the launch technique.
Later dates.
--
Scott Knight mailto:sknight@mich.com
http://www.mich.com/~sknight IRC:SS396man
'95 Black Impala SS
'94 Ducati 900SS CR
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