No insult implied or intended, but other than raw courage (or insanity), what precisely do the drivers of drag racers do? I’m a big F1 racing fan, but have yet to branch out to the other motorsports.
Steer? Seems to be pretty much of a straight line thing, and those front wheels are so small!
Accelerate? Ok, I’m willing to agree that this fundamental and important task could only be performed by the pilot him/herself, but in terms of execution - other than jamming your foot to the floor as fast as possible, what else?
Change gears? This is pretty important, no question. Is this at the crux of what the sport is about? Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to be the best gear changer, knowing the limits of your engine etc.
Deploy parachute - Well…it could be timed or somehow automated, couldn’t it?
Brake? Who needs brakes when you have a parachute?
A solo drag race would be about as exciting as trying to set a land speed record, which people still try to do.
A lot of it is plain driving skill in that you have to know the car and know exactly when to shift to get the best possible time. When you are talking about a race that only lasts a couple seconds total, you can’t waste much time making a decision.
Then you have reaction time. When the light changes you start. Next time your driving, watch how long it takes traffic to start moving when a light changes. Not for drag racing, a 1/2 second delay can make you lose. You had better have the engine running exactly were it needs to be for when the light changes.
Now you get to drive. Becareful of using too much throttle. Sitting there with your wheels spinning will not win. You need the car to move. You need to have a feel for how sticky the track is.
To make it more fun, it is a race. There is a driver beside you trying to do the same thing. It is you against him, your reaction time against his, your judgement against his, and of course, your car against his.
Steer? You bet. Especially difficult if the front wheels are in the air. Don’t cross the center line or the lane lines or you’re D.Q.ed.
Accelerate? Absolutely, but don’t just mash the throttle or the rear tires will break loose and spin. You’ll almost certainly lose if that happens.
Change gears? Yes. 5 or 6 times in under 6 seconds. Don’t miss a shift or you lose. Load the car in the trailer and go home if you screw up shifting.
Deploy parachute? Yep, but this is no big deal unless the chute fails to deploy, or a fire burns the chute away. These situations are not all that uncommon. Better hope there’s a sand pit at the end of the track.
Brake? Sure. Brakes are your friend if the car gets away from you. This happens fairly often too. You can also use them to bring down a wheelie.
In addition there are high G forces to contend with, variable traction conditions, winds, variable engine and clutch set-ups and the ever-present knowledge that there’s a bomb ready to blow just inches behind you or in front of you.
Now deal with all this in just 4.5 seconds with a terminal velocity of 330 MPH.
As an amateur Drag racer(10 years ago), I can tell you that the drivers full attention is on maintaining traction.Too much throttle too fast will spin the tires.This equals loss speed and time.Also most pros are turning times in the 5 second range.That goes by pretty darn quick.Keeping the car going in a straight line is a chore too.A car with that much horsepower and torque tends to want to pull to the right.Also the acceleration causes you to pull some G’s,so it’s physically harder to do all this.
IIRC from a special on top fuel dragsters, they only have two gears and some sort of progressive clutch to prevent loss of traction, all the driver had to do was mash the fuel pedal.
It seems like all the driver has to do is keep it pointed down the track (not easy with all that power), get a good reaction time, and shut it down quick if there is a problem.
Yeah…this is really neat because when the front wheels leave the air, I believe that the driver uses independent rear wheel brakes to keep the car straight. I know that’s true in tractor pulls and I would put money on the fact that they use rear brakes to steer in regular drag racing too.
It used to be comon on “exhibition” type cars: these were drag-racing type street-modified cars that were intended more as publicity machines than competitive entries. Some were weighted in back so that they could do a wheelie all the way down the track, and in that case, you would need some other way to steer. They had big engines and really could go fast (if you took the weights out of the trunk), but the emphasis was on doing something silly more than getting through the traps. Most “competitive” cars only briefly lift the front wheels up at the beginning of the run, if they lift at all. And it’s not that old-fashioned; you can still get all the parts for it if you want to. There’s probably cars still out there that do it.
As far as why goes, how else can you burn seven gallons of fuel in five seconds? - MC
I think other posters have adequately answered questions about the skills required. A simple calculation might put the G forces in perspective. 300+ mph in under 5 seconds AVERAGES something around 3 G’s. You’re doing this stuff with a very, very fat man sitting on your chest.
To add to the list, if you lift for too long, wind resistance slows you down. If you fail to lift (or otherwise transfer weight to the rear) at the launch the lack of traction slows you down.