[Daytona]

[quote='[ion] C2;438820']in your Alero?
quote]

Nah. I run my '93 Daytona.

And my day ended early yesterday due to a stupid STUPID mistake on my part. Well, 2 really:

STUPID MISTAKE #1: I had been running a consistent 16.91, but then had a slower run in elimination round #2 due to a bad launch (wrong rpm, tire spin, and engine too cool). Instead of leaving my dial alone I bumped it up to 16.97.

STUPID MISTAKE #2: I easily had him covered but instead of letting up past the 1000' clocks like I usually do, I waited this time until I got closer to the ET clocks before I hit the brakes.

RESULTS: I cut a .022 light against his .232 light (I had been runing tight lights all day, though I obviously didn't know about his launch until after the run). I see he's not going to catch me so I eventually hit the brakes to slow down and not break out. I broke out anyway going 16.949 on a 16.97 dial. Had I left the original 16.91 dial alone I would have won by .2 and been over my dial by 0.039 seconds.

It had been running dead on all day and yet I F---ed myself. 2 rounds later I would have had money, too. We had almost 80 cars in the class, which meant 7 rounds of racing. And they were paying out to 1/4's this time instead of just to semi's. DAMN!!!!!

What made things worse was Autostart - the new system that requires you to stage EXTREMELY quickly if you're the 2nd car into the beams. Once 1 car fully stages and the other car then turns on the pre-stage bulb, that 2nd car has to fully stage within 10 seconds. Once that 2nd stage light comes on the car only has 1.7 seconds to get ready to launch before the tree comes down. And since I have to bump my car in 3 bumps I'm left with not enough time since I'm usually the slower car of the 2 so I have to launch first.

Several times I was caught short because my opponent staged immediately and I was kept out because they were mopping my side of the track. That put a severe disadvantage on me. The slower Round 2 was because by the time I got 2 bumps in the tree was already coming down so I just hit the convertor hard and launched, causing me to overrev and spin off the line. It did hell to my RT, too, giving me a .112 light. Fortunately my opponent had a .244 light and then broke out trying to pass me up top.

Autostart is NHRA's newest tool to prevent DEEP Staging, knowing that it's even harder now to properly deep stage if you only have 1.7 seconds to do it if the race ahead of you had already completed. Good thing I began to practice shallow staging last fall.