How to bracket drag race

So you want to drag race? Well racing isn't just pushing on the gas and going as fast as you can. It is a lot more complicated than that. The only time is which you will just go 'balls out' is during your qualifying runs or if you are a pro driver. If you are a pro, you don't need this article. For most of us, when we enter a race that has a prize of some type there will be an elimination round. This for most of us will be in a 'bracket' type fashion. In part 1 of this tech article, I will describe the basics of understanding how a bracket race works. I want to explain this to you even before I tell you how to drag race, because most of you are going to need to know how it works to get anywhere in this sport. Trust me, even the pros started out bracket racing and some of them still do.

A bracket race is best described as a handicap which allows the competition to be fair. In other words, just because you are lined up against a 12 second car doesn't mean you can't beat him with your 17 second car. The theory behind this is similar to bowling or playing football. When you know you have a better team you give the disadvantage to them by giving them points. This way, they will have at least a chance to compete and you can consider the match fair. In bracket racing, let's assume you are running a 17 second quarter mile and the guy next to you is running a 12 second quarter mile. When it is time to start, he will have to wait an extra 5 seconds AFTER you start in order to make the match fair. If you were to run your EXACT 17 second quarter mile and he were to run his EXACT 12 second quarter mile, technically you should both cross the finish line at EXACTLY the same time. Unfortunately, this is only half of what you need to know, I will explain later in this article.

When you enter onto the drag strip, an official will call up to the timing tower with your 'dial-in'. This is the time in which you believe that you will run the quarter mile in. Don't be ashamed if your time is slower than your opponents because bracket racing is all about consistency, NOT all out power. I have seen guys with rental cars running 21 second quarter mile times win their class and go home with a 4 foot trophy and a few hundred dollars richer. The 'dial-in' is what you will establish (most likely) the day before the actual elimination day. In some cases, it may be the same day but just earlier. In any event, these runs are called time trials (practice). These are the runs that you want to go 'balls out' and see what the car will do. This is also the time in which you want to try different approaches to your launch. Consider these runs 'free' If you lose, who cares, you are there to practice. I entered a race at Carlsbad and lost all 9 of my time trials and came out second in the eliminations (damn you Erik Aguilar!!). Considering that there were roughly 250 entrants, I don't think I did too bad. As part of your time trials, this is also the time in which you want to change things to your car. You don't want to do this during eliminations because you may end up 'breaking out'. I will explain this later as well.

After you have figured out your dial-in, you will want to be running as close to that number as possible. This is where the consistency comes into play. The other half of winning in bracket racing is your 'reaction time'. This is what can make you INSTANTLY lose a race. In a bracket race, you are most likely going to be up against a '500 tree'. This means that between each light is .500 of a second. I guess I should explain the tree. If you noticed on the front page of the website, I have a picture of the starting lights. This is commonly referred to as a Christmas tree. If you can't remember or just didn't go there click on this link. www.deepstaged.net This will give you a look at what I am talking about. When it comes to your reaction time, your number one opponent is that tree. You have the staging lights up top, three yellows, one green and the dreaded red light at the bottom. I will give a better detail explanation in part two. When the lights begin to come down, you want to time it so that your car will leave the line at the exact same time as the green light BEGINS to light up. If you wait until you SEE the green light, you will have a poor reaction time. For most of you first time racers, I recommend this, AS SOON as you see the third yellow light, GO!! This will give you about a .600 reaction time. If you are faster than that, adjust accordingly. Launching against the tree isn't much different than looking at the street light of crossing traffic to see when you light will turn green. The only difference is that you are looking forward and you will know that there is only .500 seconds between the lights.

Now that you know about launching against the tree, let me tell you why it is so important. Imagine this, YOU are the 12 second car and you are racing the 17 second car. You will already be giving him a head start of 5 seconds. Do you really want to give the guy anymore of a head start? I didn't think so. Remember what I said before, if you run a perfect 12 second and he/she runs a perfect 17 second quarter mile, you should both technically cross the finish line at exactly the same time. Now lets factor in the reaction time. If he launches at a perfect .500 reaction and you launch at .700 he already has an extra .200 seconds margin of error. In other words, he could run a 17.20 second quarter and you could run your perfect 12 second quarter and you would still end up cross the line at exactly the same time (Technically, you would win in that case but that's really complicated to explain, maybe pt.3.). Anyway, if you so much as sneeze, he could end up beating you and you will be packing up and going home. Now lets go out on a technical limb, assume your dialed in at 12.23 and your opponent is dialed in at 17.39. When the lights come down, he launches at a reaction time of .613 and you launch at a reaction time of .761. He crosses the finish line running a 17.51 and you cross the finish line running a 12.28. At first glance, it looks as if you won, you ran closer to your number than he did. WRONG !! He beat you by .078 seconds the reason for this is the reaction time. He launched .148 second quicker than you did and had that much more margin for error than you did. So even though his time difference between the dial in and the actual e.t. was .120 seconds and your time difference was only .050 seconds. he still beat you because he had a margin of error of .148 PLUS your .050 Totaling .198 seconds of total "OOPS" time. If you didn't understand anything I just said, don't worry you will get it as you race more. The bottom line is that you want to get your reaction time to be as close to .500 as possible with out going under. Going under is called 'red lighting' and it is bad, plain and simple. If you red light, you lose INSTANTLY no matter what you run or what he runs. In other words, if you red light, he could technically get out and push his car down the track and win the run 5 minutes later. Of course, the officials wouldn't let that happen, but you get the picture.

Alright the last thing I am going to talk about is breaking out. This is pretty simple to understand, if you run faster than your dial-in, you 'break out'. When you write down your dial in, you are telling the officials and your opponent that this is what you are going to run the quarter mile in. They adjust the tree to your individual dial ins and you race down the track. If you run faster than your estimated time, than the match is deemed unfair because you only gave them so much of a handicap. There are times in which this can hurt you and times when it can help you. You will figure all of them out as you race more and more.

In this section, I a going to talk about how to actually line up against the tree. This is one of the most common mistakes that a first time racer does. If you are at an event, in most cases you will be yelled at and criticized in the event you don't line up correctly. Okay, you've made it through the staging lanes by waiting in line for 20 minutes or more. Now is the time to show what you can do. The official is going to direct you to the lane you are to run. Whether it is the inside or the outside lane who knows. By reading this, you will know what to do when it is your turn to face the Christmas tree.

The first thing you will come to is the burn out box (or water box). This is commonly a patch of concrete about 8 feet wide and 3-4 feet long. It will have a dip in the middle and a puddle of water. The water is there for a reason, it acts like an activator to the burn out. You don't want to attempt a burnout with out the water or you could end up breaking an axle or worse. The official in most cases will guide you into the burn out box and tell you when to stop. You do not want to be in the middle of the puddle of water. You actually want to be just on the far edge of the burnout box. This will have meant that your tires have rolled through the water and are damp enough to begin the burn out. If you stay in the middle of the burn out box, your tires will remain wet and you will defeat the whole purpose of the burnout. I guess I should tell you what that purpose is. Most people think of the burn out as a way to warm up the tires or make them stickier. Well, that is only half of the purpose, the second half is to get rocks, dirt or other foreign debris off of the tires. So by staying in the water box for the whole burn out, you are not only keeping the water on the tires, but you are not heating them up because they are being cooled down by the water. Burn outs are really ONLY effective if you are running on TRUE drag slicks or selected drag radials. Check with the drag radial manufacture to find out if you need to do a burn out.

If you have regular street tires, a burn out WILL NOT HELP!! It is recommended that you don't attempt a burn out and go around the water box if at all possible. The grooves that are in the street tire are designed to pick up rain and water and disperse it through the tire. By going through the water box, you are in fact picking up the water and placing it onto the tires. The more you spin the tires in the water box, the more water you pick up. Not only will this make it so you have water on your tires at the line, but you will end up tracking water behind you for the next guy or making the officials mop up the water. By the way, they don't like it when you put water on their track. So the bottom line to this is that if you really want to do a burn out, make it count and do it correctly, but check to see if it will help you. I have found that for most street tires, even the really expensive one's, a burn out hurts my time.

The second thing you are going to come to is the staging lights. Remember what the tree looks like? About 15-20 feet from the burn out box (in most cases) will be a little white box with two holes in it. These holes for reference, look like mouse hole similar to what you see on television cartoons. They actually house the staging lights. They are spread 8 inches apart from each other and activate the two lights on the top of the Christmas tree. When your front tires break the light beams they will illuminate the corresponding lights. The first light beam will light up the top light called the pre-staged light. This lets the official and your opponent that you are ready to line up. You want to be sure to 'creep' into the the lights. I have seen many people pass the lights and then they can't figure out why they can't stage. What I do, is when I break the first beam and pre-stage, I stop. This way I am in control of how I want to stage.

When you are ready to race, you are going to move forward slightly and break the second beam of light. This will stage you. Now there are three different ways to stage. The first way is to 'shallow stage' this is where you barely move forward enough to activate the stage light. This method really helps when you are on street tires. The reason for shallow staging is because you can launch at a lower rpm and build your speed so that you don't spin off of the line. I feel that it gives you more control of your overall launch. If you move forward a bit more, you are simply 'staged'. You will know when you are shallow staged or staged when both the pre-staged light and the staged light are still lit. The third way to stage is called 'deep staging' This is were you move forward so far that the pre-staged light turns off and only the staged light remains lit. You can also deep stage with both staging lights on but it is harder to do and could cause you to red light easier. The problem with deep staging is that when the light turns green, you will have no momentum and you will have to rely on pure torque to get you out of the hole. Some people like to deep stage because they think it gives them a bit of a head start because of the extra few inches. I personally have found little benefit to deep staging so I won't talk about it here.

After the lights have gone down and you have the green light the race has technically began. Although the lights are green and your opponent has already headed down the track. The timing DOES NOT start until you actually leave the line. In other words, even if you sat at the line for a minute, you can still run a 12 second quarter mile. You will see this a lot in the pro class where they are not running anybody. The light could be green for ages and they will still click off a 7 second pass. This is because the timing WILL NOT START until you have left the line but you can still loose the race, remember the reaction time thing?

The next beam of light that you will cross is called the 60-foot mark. This mark is pretty much exactly what it says. It measures how long it takes for you to go 60 feet. This is a really good tool to tell you how you are launching and if there is anything that you need to improve. I will get more into this at a later time. After the 60-foot mark you will come to your 330 mark. This is again a measurement of how the car is reacting. Next you come to the 660 mark or the 1/8th mile marker. This tells you how your car is doing as far as traction, wheel spin, etc. On most time slips, this will not only give you a time, but will also give you a MPH reading. Pay attention to these because they can tell you a lot. The next mark is the 990/1000 ft mark, again another timing thing. The last mark is the 1320-ft or 1/4 mile mark. This is the one that tells you what time you ran in the race. On the time slip, it will be followed by you 1320-ft MPH.

At the end of the track you may have noticed a section that has two thick lines sometimes cross hatched together. This is called the traps. During this point is where your actual MPH is calculated. It really has no other purpose than that BUT the furthest line is the finish line. Don't let off the gas until cross that last line. On certain tracks they will have a light along the side of the track that will light up if you win, sometimes it is on top of the timing lights and sometime it just doesn't exist. Don't worry about it if you don't see it.

After you have finished the race, you will have to obviously exit the track. Some tracks have only one turn out and others have three or more. For the tracks that have only one turnout, it may be on the left or the right depending on the track set up. In most cases this turnout is about 1/2 mile after the traps. This should give you ample time to slow down and exit the track. On tracks with 3 turn outs, the first is usually 1/4 mile after the traps and the next two are every 1/8th mile after that. For faster cars, DON'T attempt to exit on the first turn out. Also, if you are the person in front, I recommend that you wait until the turnout AFTER the turnout your opponent took. This is just common courtesy to your opponent and the track officials. ALWAYS know where you opponent is so that you don't turn into him if he followed you for some reason. I have seen car collide at the end of the track as they tried to exit. It makes the officials MAD. One thing to remember is that most insurance companies WILL NOT cover an accident or collision if you are on a race track. So don't get into any fender benders.

After you have exited the track you will be driving down the return road. The speed limit on these roads is normally 5 mph sometimes higher but pay attention. Track officials will kick you off the track if you speed down the return road. The quarter mile is the place to show your speed not the return road no matter how bad you lost. Somewhere along the return road is going to be a station that hands out your time slips. This is the place where you will find your fate. Be courteous to the person attending the both. They have no idea of who you are and did not watch your run. So if you see a mistake, or don't get a time slip be polite and ask for advice. They will most likely direct you to the timing tower where you can get your numbers.

Hopefully this is enough information for you to get out on to the track. If you are still unsure of how to race or line up, take a few minutes to watch how other people line up and take notes from them. Racing is all about having fun and being a good sport. Remember that and you could be the next pro class driver signing autographs. Good luck and race safe