I know nothing about what it takes to be a drag racer. But if it were easy, everybody would do it. I’m sure it’s very difficult, takes years of training, etc., etc.
But to the untrained eye it looks like: Wait for the green light then stomp on the gas. 
So what am I missing that makes this sport so competitive and challenging?
Well, have you ever tried to run in high heels and a sequined dress? 
(Sorry, but that really was the first thing I thought when I saw the subject line!!).
But more seriously… well, as far as why EVERYONE doesn’t do it: a fair number of people do attempt to at least basically obey the law, avoid hitting other cars, avoid running right over pedestrians, try to maintain control of their own cars, not trash their cars’ engines doing accelerations the cars aren’t designed to handle…
But as far as the skill involved, assuming the legalities aren’t a concern - I presume that it’s harder to keep control of a car accelerating like crazy, even on straight roads.
I am not a drag racer, but I am a physicist, and I can take some guesses based on that. Your acceleration is going to be limited by the coefficient of friction between your tires and the road, and the coefficient of friction is generally less between two objects that are sliding relative to each other than between those same two objects not sliding. So if you step too hard on the gas, then you’ll just spin your wheels, and not get as much traction, leading to less acceleration and hence less speed. I presume that a skilled drag racer is one who can give the engine just enough that the wheels come just shy of breaking free. It’s sort of like on the Price is Right: You want to get as close as you can without going over.
Assuming you’re talking about Top Fuel and Funny Cars and other top-flight racing… you need ridiculously fast reflexes.
If you’re talking about racing road-legal cars, nothing about it is particularly difficult, although your timing has to be pretty good if you’re driving a manual.
It’s fair to note that a lot of it is the machine - the skill of building and tuning it just right will have much to say about who wins.
The classes differ as to what is allowed but my understanding is that many of the higher categories allow various forms of mechanised help with feeding in the power to avoid wheelspin. Not usually “intelligent” launch control as such, but progressive clutches that slip to a controlled degree.
Someone who knows more could say a lot more.
Rank and file drag racers (Sportsman Classes), vs. the those in the professional categories race in brackets (Bracket Racing). The driver selects an ET (Elapsed Time) he wants to run, 10.90 seconds for example. He may run side by side against a driver/car whose “dial in” is 9.00 seconds. The green light for the 9.00 car will come on 1.9 seconds later.
Ideally, each car will run right on his number. Believe it or not, it’s not uncommon even with a myriad of vaiables. A good driver can deal with varying air temp, humidity, track temp, wind, traction, etc. and still run his number.
If each driver ran his number, without running under, the car that crosses the finish line wins. If that happened the driver with the quickest Reaction Time would win. The Reaction Time is the time between the green light going on and the front wheels crossing the start line.
I know this might seem a bit confusing, but it’s the best I can do without writing a book. These guys are really good at knowing what their cars are capable of and good at controlling a lot of factors. Almost at will they can adjust their runs by 6 or 7 thousands of a second.
You might take a look-see at www.nhra.com
I am not talking about street racing, I am talking about track racing as a sport. Just drag racing, not stock car/NASCAR/Formula 1 racing.
I think that if you wait till you actually see the green light, you’ll go a lot slower than if you anticipate it based on the other lights. Yet if you start even the tiniest bit too soon, you automatically lose.
Also, you would already be revving the engine, so you’d start by dropping the clutch or releasing the brake as well as controlling the throttle.
"What’s so hard about it? To the untrained eye it looks like: Wait for the starters pistol then run as fast you can. "Maybe it’s not hard. Maybe it’s just hard to do better than the other guy. You could make the same arguments about the 100 meter dash.
Competitiveness doesn’t have anything to do with how hard a given task is.
As PatriotGrrrl has implied, if you WAIT for the green light, you’ve already lost. The trick is to anticipate the green light and more or less be in the process of stomping on the gas when it comes on, but NOT be so quick that you beat it, thus RED-LIGHTING, which is taking off before the green light and be disqualified, this is indicated by a red light coming-on on the “Christmas Tree”, thus the term red-lighting.
The “Christmas Tree” is a signaling pole at the starting line that hold lights of various colour.
Reflexes that are worth .002 seconds are worth a lot. Tie that gift to an ability to control wheel spin and modulate the clutch and the shifts properly with an ability to maintain a line to the finish. There are tiny little nuances that add up to a fraction of a second.
No one gets in a dragster and just mashes the throttle and holds on for the ride. The machine has to complement the driver, and the driver has to complement the machine.
Also keep in mind that the driver of a top fuel dragster is handling the car while undergoing accelerations of over 5 g slamming them back into the seat. The acceleration of a dragster off the line is comparable to a jet fighter being launched from a catapult aboard an aircraft carrier.
Five g? Really? I knew they had managed to get the coefficient of friction up over 2, but 5 is pretty impressive. Do they have to replace the tires after every run?
Not quite, as it turns out, but close:
http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/forum/miscellaneous/20271-top-fuel-dragster-facts.html
I’m surprised they DON’T change them for each run, what with the burnouts at the start of a run.
And I checked the 5 G figure by looking up the wiki article which gave a figure of acceleration from 0 to 100 mph in 0.8 sec for 5.7 G. That fact page gives an even larger figure for the initial launch:
Some interesting factoids on that page.
Is the timing of the green light random? I’ve wondered what professional drivers’ sense of rhythm is like. Given the precise timing needs of hearing, shifting, reacting, etc., and the dexterity involved in putting it all together, I bet they’d be pretty good percussionists.
But I’ve never really been too interested in cars driving in a straight line to find out. Not disdainful, just not all that interested. Now, if someone invents a sport of competitive parallel parking, that would be something to watch.
In all the races I have seen on TV there is a light pole. A few seconds before the start the top lights go on and then get to the green in a predetermined time. Basically 3, 2, 1 Go! sort of thing. Not random at all.
The christmas tree timing: It’s not random, but each start is different somehow. Throttle response is going to be different with weather conditions, and the exact RPM the engine is at… and some drivers will tell you they can sense where the engine is at in it’s cycle and almost subconsciously move their foot downward to launch at just the right nanosecond.
I would use a sniper analogy. All the sniper has to do at 300 yards out is put a target in a cross hair and pull a trigger. Ergo, anyone can be a sniper. Right? Nope, because of the punishment of precision, being off by millimeters and milliseconds means losing or missing.
An experienced driver will see each light (yellow & green) in three stages: coming on, on and going off. He will never wait until he sees the green to launch. At what point (of the aforementioned three) on the last yellow he launches depends on his personal reactions and those of his vehicle. Among other things, he factors the delay in his brain telling him to launch and his body translating this signal into physical movement of his hands and feet.
When you consider the ability to control one’s Elapsed Time in the thousandths of seconds, you see how nothing is left to chance. Everything is choreographed in the most minute terms.
I suppose the driver also has to be able to sense anything that is not quite right about the car and communicate that to the crew afterwards.