2011 458 quarter mile speed run

Nice run, great time!

 

Are you allowed to treat your tires to try to make them stickier? Check out VHT Track Bite. Treating the tires may be cheating in your race format but if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.

I'd try some experiments to figure out a way to launch the car better - a 1.92 60-foot is indicative of poor traction.

Wallace (current fastest 60-foot time: 1.17)

 

Favorable weather but a terrible 60', good leave and 10's easy! Unreal car, good run!

 

impressive

 

tommygold : What fuel were you running ? 93-octane ?

 

I found that on my late model cars running street rubber the sidewalls were so stiff that lowering the tire pressure did not improve my 60 foot time and the added rolling resistance actually reduced my trap speed. All tires are different so, by all means, experiment. However, I'm predicting that you won't get any improvement by lowering tire pressure.

Here's a simple experiment that you can do with only a video camera and a tripod to find out how much wheelspin you are getting. Draw a white line with chalk on a rear tire for reference. Put the camera on a tripod and frame the shot so you can see both the front tire and the rear tire in the video. Launch the car and then play back the video, counting the number of tire revs your rear made while travelling the length of the car's wheelbase. It should be about 1.25 revs if you are really hooked up.

(Your wheelbase is 104.3 inches and your tire circumference is about 88 inches.)

I used Trackbite a lot back in the day when I was a struggling college student trying to make his slicks last the rest of the season (cough, cough 1980s). It does work. The proper way to apply it is to pour a small amount on the ground and do a burnout in it. BTW, don't do a burnout in the water with your street tires, it does more harm than good because it flings a bunch of water up into your wheelwell.

Anybody who has walked on a properly prepped drag strip will tell you that the VHT makes the track so sticky it will pull the tennis shoes off of your feet if you are not careful!

Wallace

 

430...Poke around that Cobra board for a while and it's reasonable to think that the Shelby can make a much better run than you think (12.5) especially if his opponent is putting in some real practice and is now getting advice from those guys.

Tommy..Thanks for this wonderful thread to start. Admittedly I know nothing about owning a Ferrari but one other thing I would think about is possibly talking to the Ferrari people themselves. I'd think they might be interested and could maybe give a little piece of advice or two on how to make your conditions optimal for the race. Maybe they would give you a tip or two as it might not take too much time and they might want to hear about a win. Then again I could be completely wrong they might not give a damn. I know its a fully stock race but they could have something to say.

 

Stickier tires, launch control, trackbite and race gas. If you get that 1.9 60ft down to 1.7 then you will run a 10.8. Every tenth on the 60ft is worth 2 tenths at the end. I wish my ZR1 was that easy to launch.

 

I wish I was able to get 93 octane here in California. Excellent run, very impressive and great video.

 

In Launch Control mode the car will upshift automatically even though it is in manual. The whole idea of LC is automated maximum performance with minimum effort from the driver.

In LC you can also, let's say, shift with the paddle from 1st to 2nd, and the car will still upshift automatically from 2nd to 3rd.

Without LC in RACE & manual the car will not upshift automatically before the rev limiter (but does so in SPORT in which LC is not available).

 

When I posted that estimate, the guy had only put 20 miles on the car in like 2 years or something... No drag experience of any kind.

Since then the dynamics have changed a bit... they pushed back the race over a month and the Cobra driver is practicing/learning.

If 12.4 was the over/under... I'd probably still take the over as I still don't think he'll get there, but maybe he can beat it with some practice.

He ain't never going to be in the low 11's... I'd be stunned.

One thing is abundantly clear, the outcome of the race will be determined by the Cobra driver. Tommy can pull low elevens until something breaks or he runs out of fuel.

Update: shipem, you should go poke around the Cobra board now.... Tommy is spotting him .2 seconds plus he carrying his buddy's girl friend in the car as ballast. Even with that, the Cobra guys have given up hope on the Cobra being faster, most are just hoping Tommy falls asleep or something on one of the three pulls. Ouch.

 

Two quick things. Dropping tire pressure will hurt you, not help you. Run them at 32 pounds. The stiff sidewalls will not deform well below that and you will actually create a cupping on the center of the tread, reducing center tread-to-ground pressure. If anything increase the front tire pressure to 50psi cold. (reduce back to 32 before driving on the road)

Second thing... The ECU and fuel management system in the 458 can sense changes in fuels, but may freak out if you put 103 in there. Also, 103 octane gas has LESS potential energy than 93 and is used in ultra high compression engines to avoid premature detonation. The car is optimized to run on 93.

The biggest thing you can do to win is have fresh rubber and to work on your reaction times.

Good luck!

 

LIGHTNING STUCK.... Quoted from the Cobra thread: http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109196&page=15

I don't know if Blitz just got lucky or if he was rope-a-doping him the whole time but he did it. I'll admit to being completely amazed.

I did not follow the whole thing but to the best of my knowledge, Blitz had never run better than like 12.8 in practice.

[btw the above is third hand, neither of the two drivers posted but it was posted by several people who were apparently there.]

 

Great run and awesome trap speed. I saw the video of the 458 running a cobra and was running mid 11's at 121 mph. I know that trap speed varies from car to car and from track to track but I never seen a 10 mph spread. I hope the average 458 traps closer to 130 mph than 120 mph.

 

Terrific run. Most impressive was your hand movement: none at all. Talk about stability. Almost like the car doesn't need a driver.