Why do we continually use the super classe as track testers?

[Rich Biebel]

I am not sure I see the correlation between delay boxes and throtle stops and how their use has anything to do with a car that starts up in gear and the driver loses control of it!

I have been racing since the old days and I am talking the mid 60's....

Cars crashed then too. Stockers crashed and there was no .90 cars and no delay boxes or t-stops. 7" tires on narrow rims with low air pressure.....NHRA made believe it wasn't happening.....

Todays cars are way faster and have way more HP then ever and the t-stops and timers allowed this to develop but it is not the only reason cars lose control.......

Water under the track is percolating up to the surface and somehow the traction compound is making it worse is my thought on this. Seen it a lot of times in the last few years and I really don't know why it has gotten worse in the last few years.....

All tracks send cars out on the track and use them as guinea pigs....Nothing new whatsoever and I can relate numerous events where track conditions were not right and we were directed out there anyway.

I have helped a number of people get started in racing....One thing I always preach......you are in charge of yourself and your car. If it looks unsafe out there and cars are not getting down the track.....don't make the run!!! It's your safety and your car and missing a run or a round is way better then crashing because the officials THOUGHT things were ok.....

Joe Sway is about the hardest working track owner you'll ever see and knows his track.....He explained to us earlier this year how he gets the track to hook and did exactly that when we had a tree pollen attack! I am really surprised he and his crew and Bob Lang and crew couldn't get the track to be safe......

I sure am glad I skipped this event!!!

[Jack McCarthy]

someone would have to let me know if a track was marginal... ive never spun

jack

[KEVIN T]

I agree with CBS, I'm a S/ST driver and when they called us to the lanes on Fri. afternoon we were getting ready to come out they stopped again and scraped the lanes about 60' out. And yes Bob Lang was out there getting his hands dirty scraping the track.

Kevin Tiedemann
S/ST 145T

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

I am not sure I see the correlation between delay boxes and throtle stops and how their use has anything to do with a car that starts up in gear and the driver loses control of it!

There is none, you just attempted to see something that was not there. The comment about the driver backing over the dragster behind him was merely a part of the anecdote.

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

Todays cars are way faster and have way more HP then ever and the t-stops and timers allowed this to develop but it is not the only reason cars lose control.......

But to ignore this as a prime reason is to avoid addressing a major portion of the problem, especially given the original post was a complaint that directly addressed their power and throttle stops. When you apply 800 to 1000 HP or more to a coasting, unloaded car, 300' down track where there is less traction, if the track is not good, you're going to blow the tires off. If you have 800-900HP, and can run 9.90 or 10.90 at 150-160MPH, when your tires break loose in high gear, they're going to spin up to about 160MPH. If you aren't going straight, or the traction is not equal for both tires, you're going to hit the wall, the only question is left or right. It's a simple matter of physics. Ignoring simple physics will get you hurt.

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

Water under the track is percolating up to the surface and somehow the traction compound is making it worse is my thought on this. Seen it a lot of times in the last few years and I really don't know why it has gotten worse in the last few years.....

The problem in most cases is the fact that races end up being run on tracks that have been rained on for 1-3 days, and then get prepped in less than one. You simply cannot expect to consistently and successfully prep a track that has had every bit of the rubber washed off of it for 1-3 days, as well as having the oil forced up out of it, in anything less than a day or more. And if any rain falls on it again, during that prep or right after, expect the track to go away again. There are tracks where water comes up through the track, but that is not the problem everywhere, or even at most tracks.

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

All tracks send cars out on the track and use them as guinea pigs....Nothing new whatsoever and I can relate numerous events where track conditions were not right and we were directed out there anyway.

I have helped a number of people get started in racing....One thing I always preach......you are in charge of yourself and your car. If it looks unsafe out there and cars are not getting down the track.....don't make the run!!! It's your safety and your car and missing a run or a round is way better then crashing because the officials THOUGHT things were ok.....

Exactly.

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

Joe Sway is about the hardest working track owner you'll ever see and knows his track.....He explained to us earlier this year how he gets the track to hook and did exactly that when we had a tree pollen attack! I am really surprised he and his crew and Bob Lang and crew couldn't get the track to be safe......

I sure am glad I skipped this event!!!

I don't really see it as a big surprise. It has nothing to do with how hard Joe Sway or Bob Lang work, or how conscientious they are, and they are great people. It's simply a matter of what can and cannot be done. Heavy and constant rain will take the rubber off of a track, what little is left behind is a hindrance to traction, and the rain is going to bring up all of the oil that is in the track, and leave it right there on the surface. Once that happens, the only way to consistently and reliably get a good racing surface is to scrape and scrub, getting the old left over rubber and the oil off before you even begin to try to put down traction compound or drag rubber on it. If you don't, you end up with a smear of oil and bad rubber with traction compound on top of it.

[Charlie Yannetti]

It was a terrible weekend for D1 at Atco.. no doubt about it.. is there fault, or where does it lay, isn't really the issue..

Being a D1 racer attending this race, I can honestly say that Atco Raceway and Bob Lang and the rest of his staff tried and did everything they could to get this event in.. why the track was like it was is a mystery to me.. I watched as Joe Sway and his guys put down rosen and dragged the entire track surface at one point.. the track was scraped, dragged, and sprayed numerous times.. the jet was out on the track whenever it was thought necessary.. but it just seemed that nothing held up early in the day, or as evening set in.. could it be the cooling winds coming down the track thwarting the efforts of the jet??.. I don't know, but maybe.. could it be a difference in past and present traction compounds being used.. I don't know, but probably has something to do with it.. but there needs to be a reason, an answer, and a solution..

Is it me, or have track conditons over the last two seasons deteriorated??.. what is different in the track prep equation.. that's a starting point.. I've been told that there is a different traction compound that requires additives and proper mixing.. could this be the problem??..

WHATEVER!!!.. somebody has to fix something..

On Friday night, after raining for most of the day, it was anouced that the Sportsman program would be called to the lanes.. I watched S/ST car after S/ST car get loose when the stop came off, or on the shift point.. I opted to put my S/G car back in the trailer.. there is no penalty for not making a run if you don't feel right about it..

WE "ALL" HAVE TO STOP RACING WHEN IT IS NOT SAFE!!!

[Alan Roehrich]

Rock and his partner bring up some great ideas.

The problem I see with a set procedure is that a set procedure ignores the differences in the tracks themselves, and there's no way to get all of the tracks to one spec for the racing surface.

That one problem makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have any sort of single set procedure, or even a set single traction compound.

We cannot ignore the differences in the tracks anymore than we can ignore the differences in weather conditions.

We also cannot ignore the cars and where the wrecks are happening, and it isn't just the .90 Super classes and their throttle stops, it's also the Top Dragster, Top Sportsman, and Pro Mod classes. A lot of what we are seeing is problems that happen when you apply a lot of power down track. The reality is that while there may be better traction down track than there was even ten years ago, there are a lot more cars applying a lot more power further down track than there were.

As far as prep that is biased towards the fuel cars goes, I'm not sure how this relates to Atco this past weekend, or for that matter the many Lucas races that have seen this type of problem in the recent past. Further, NHRA has admitted, after the Pro Stock guys called them out on it, that most of the "fuel prep" bias is that they don't spray past 1000'. Hardly an issue to a car that gets out of shape at 300'.

It is the truth that will help solve the problem. And what must be done is the racers must get together and go as a group to NHRA, and firmly remind them of their original motto and slogan. It can't be just one group, it has to be all of the sportsman racers.

[Greg Hill]

There is a difference in traction compounds being used at different tracks. This summer at Bowling Green the track was awesome even with 100 degree temps and probably 130 plus track temps. You could walk out on the starting line and it would just about pull your shoe off at any time. This past weekend at Ohio Valley traction was okay but not great. I saw a fair amount of people spin. I didn't go out on the track but other people told me there was no sticky on the starting line. When you looked at the rear tires on different race cars they were very smooth with nothing stuck to them after a run. I was told that Ohio Valley was using VP traction compound which I'm also told doesn't work that great at cooler temps. The old VHT mixed 50/50 with alcohol was always great at any temp.

[John DiBartolomeo]

First of all, there was something going on with the track surface at Atco that no one could understand. I've never seen that track surface look like that in all the years and times I've been there. Both Joe Sway and Bob Lang did everything they could to "fix" the problem to no avail. I was the unfortunate "test dummy" Friday night to go down the track before they pulled the plug and I can tell you I thought I had a Top Fuel dragster and the clutch malfunctioned because when I came off the stop, the tires went right up in smoke. I walked the track with Bob Lang and others immediately after the run and no one could understand the reason.

However, I believe there's a bigger issue here and that is driver safety. We've always crashed cars. I don't know the statistics but I wouldn't be surprised that there are any more cars crashing now then in any other year. My concern is that I don't care why the car crashed (obviously I care and want to know why), I just want to make sure the driver walks away. We're always going to crash cars. This is racing and it's dangerous. But we have to assure that the driver can walk away, something Tom Giordano wasn't able to do Saturday night for whatever reason. There are investigations into all accidents and I'd like to know why the results aren't known. When Woodro Josey ran into Lake Gainesville (or whatever that was), shortly thereafter there was a Tech Directive telling us to check our brake pedal rods. Why can't this be done with every crash? I don't want to hear about legal anything. We're dealing with lives here. This to me is the bigger issue. As I said, cars will crash, tracks will be junk, parts will break. We just have to find a way to make sure the driver is able to get out without injury.

[CBS]

They were super street cars..heavy....big tires.....the first pair got loose and crashed.........this isn't about throttle stops....its about safety.....and track conditions....

Any of the classes would have been loose.....no doubt about it....don't turn my thread into a throttle stop discussion....and A thru H stocker would have spun .....on that track....

[Chad Rhodes]

Originally Posted by CBS

They were super street cars..heavy....big tires.....the first pair got loose and crashed.........this isn't about throttle stops....its about safety.....and track conditions....

Any of the classes would have been loose.....no doubt about it....don't turn my thread into a throttle stop discussion....and A thru H stocker would have spun .....on that track....

rock, i absolutely believe you on that, however if a stocker spins at the hit, he loses the round. If a super car blows the tires off 300' out when it comes off the stop its moving a lot faster and much worse things can happen. Linear application of power will stay hooked up much better than applying power to a basically coasting chassis.