Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Branches California about yesterday @ sac race way.

Actually, just FWIW -- spinning the tires at the launch doesn't end up changing the trap speed very much. I did an experiment when I lived up in Idaho (and frequented the drag strip far too much). Start (easy) in 1st, shift at ~3000 RPM into *3rd*, and then pull to the finish line. The ET sucks (like 18 or 19-something) but the MPH was almost the same (~90 vs. 92 normally at that elevation).

Spinning the tires hurts your ET a lot, but your trap speed is based on the the square root of the integration of wheel torque(* tire radius) over distance (work), so even if you spin your tires for 100', it's only 7% of the total distance (and you're still getting around 1/2 of the normal torque), so at most sqrt(3.5)% off. Maybe 1-2 mph, at most. (and 100' is a long ways to be spinning the tires!) Just think about it as how fast you'd be going if you only went 1280' instead of 1320' -- it's not that much different.

You learn a lot of odd things in physics. You just don't get to use them much. I'm an electical engineer for a living and I still don't use it much.

Those Caprices are pretty bad (in a good way) cars. For a big boat, they go pretty well. Of course, having a 5.7L engine never hurt anyone ;-).

-Lance