4 speed at the track - tips?

Good luck on your first trip to the strip!

You are going to be overwhelmed with all the stuff that a 4-speed driver has to be thinking about on the starting line. If you are going to be racing your car in the trim that you described...........

- forget about doing a burnout. It does no good for street tires. Drive around the water box and do a quick dry hop or two just to make sure the tire tread is clean.
- Spend your time trials trying to figure out how to best launch the car. If you try to dump the clutch at 3-grand, you will blow the tires off and go nowhere. You will likely need to ease it off the starting line and then hammer it once you are rolling. You will want to get the car rolling with minimal wheel spin. A little tire spin is good, it absorbs the energy from dumping the clutch. Too much and you will look like a funny car!
- Decide the rpm you want to shift at and try to hit the same shift points every time. With the gearing that you have and tire size, you will likely be hitting 4th gear just before the stripe. Don't worry about that, you are not doing anything wrong, that is just what is going to happen with a car set up like yours.
- Get comfortable with your starting line routine. Before you can improve the performance of the driver (very important) and the car, you need to have a solid baseline for comparison. You are not going to become a reincarnation of Ronnie Sox the first time out!
- Do you have a line-loc? If not, don't stage too shallow because you may roll out of the beam if the starting line is not real flat. Make sure that you are ready to go once you've lit the stage light becuase the starter won't wait long to trip the lights once both cars are staged. It may work to your benefit to stage first, it will give you a little more time to get set. Good time to mention a little starting line etiquette. If you are the first car to the starting line, once you've lit the pre-stage light, stop until your opponent has at least lit the pre-stage bulb. Once you have both pre-staged, go ahead and light the stage light.
- Once the tree starts to count down (assuming a sportsman tree), there is .4 or .5 sec between the yellow bulbs. You want to leave on the last yellow light coming on. You might need to modify this somewhat, depending on how deep you stage and how quickly the car reacts to clutch engagement. this is still a good place to start. Remember that red lights during time trials mean nothing so don't give up if you light the red-eye. That just means that you left a little early (your reaction time, good or bad, is shown on the time slip) and you might need to modify your starting line routine a little.

I won't kid you and others on this forum who race will verify this.......much of what I said will take a lot of practice to nail down, so don't feel discouraged if things don't go well on your first trip. Enjoy the experience and have fun!!! L8r.

Jim