Thread: Help me.
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Old 04-23-2009, 12:16 AM   #5 (permalink)
imag
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Oakland, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AARC51 View Post
So what I said originally might have been a little misleading. I know how to ~drive~ the car, I owned a 5spd Mazda3 for 2 years, I just don't know how to properly race it. I clearly will not get a 13.4 1/4 mile out of this car. More like 14.3. I guess what I'm really looking for is drag racing tips on launching/shifting.
I was wondering... I actually thought you might be trolling.

I'm not actually much into drag racing, so I'm not really the person to ask, but Car and Driver (or R&T or Edmunds) recently had an article about how they get the best 0-60 for each car. All of them are really about experimentation to some extent. You generally want to keep the revs up over 4K, which is why you usually want to clutch drop for wheelspin at the start (spinning tires is better than frying the clutch). I dunno - I just don't feel comfortable whaling on my cars that way (get me to a road course - that's a whole other story), but I would say go to the track on a cheap drag night. You'll learn a lot there, from other people, and from having runs timed. It will be embarassing the first time, but ask questions instead of pretending like you know what you're doing, and people will almost always give you tons of pointers....
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