OMG, I can't believe this! some of you just aren't getting it!
tcobra is right on the money, honestly.
I understand what bret was getting at, but he was really, really having a hard time getting it across well.
remember, hp is ALWAYS a function of torque and engine speed. If you don't have tq, you won't have hp, unless you dramatically increase engine speeds. high engine speeds makes a car very very difficult to launch whether it is fwd or rwd, and is murder on clutches, and in the Contour's case, diffs.
Most anything you see at the track is going to have enough power to spin its tires, even cars w/ slicks (umm, burnout anyone??) so regardless of how much traction you have, more can always help. The key then is how do I make the best use of the traction I have? Well, you try to launch at the point right where the wheels start to slip a little but not spin. well, in a car w/ not so much tq, you need to launch at a high rpm to hit this point, and the speed differential is pretty high, so either the tires just spin, or the clutch slips, or everything hooks up and (clutch and tires) puts a huge shock load on the drivetrain and either breaks something or drags the motor down to a much lower speed. On a contour, the only real way to make it work is with the clutch slipping (SVT2000 has gotten this down pretty good, and that is why he is the only near-stock SVT into mid-high 14s)
well, how do we improve the situation? let's try to lower the launch rpm, so it gives us a chance to hook up better, but stock, the engine will just bog down and end up w/ a worse 60' time. hmm, what happens if we add torque? well, that lets us keep that slip/grip point on launch, but do it at a lower rpm, which makes it much, much easier to launch, because the speed differential of the engine to what the tires need to do isn't as great as with a higher launch rpm.
Ideally, a drag racer wants to keep his driven wheels right at that point of a little slip in acceleration all the way down the track. well, nobody can do that in a street driven car (at least none that I'm aware of) so you try to keep it at that point for as long as possible. More torque will make it easier to sit right on that point from earlier in the launch, and allow it to maintain that point farther down the track. Hp still helps, since it is simply tq in motion, but a fat torque curve will help far more than a single high peak in the hp curve. Its all about area under the curve. (this is another reason why turbos are so much better typically than a centrifugal turbo, just to stay on topic :D)
