Guest Post: Three Parts to Drag Racing

There are basically three parts to drag racing: pre-staging/staging, the reaction to the Christmas Tree, and finish line driving.

Pre-staging is what happens before you get to the Tree. For a street car, there really isn't anything you need to do. But in a race car, pre-staging is doing a burnout, which means you spin the tires to put heat in them to help them get better grip. 

An example of a drag racing burn out.
Photo retrieved from www.zeroto60times.com.

Then, you get to the Christmas Tree and stage. You slowly move the car up the line to turn on the two sets of lights on top of the Tree. When the three lights in the middle of the Tree count down, you hit the gas pedal and take off down the track.

Finally, there is finish line driving. For me, finish line driving is by far the hardest part of racing. It depends on who you learn from and how you approach it, but basically as you start to get closer to the finish line you will start to look for the racer in the other lane. By doing this, you are judging where your car is compared to the other driver.

I think it is essential do to this because the racer that is closer to their dial-in (their prediction of how fast their car will go) wins the race.

Racers also have to be aware of how close their finish to the other driver. This is called the stripe. Because I am still relatively new to drag racing, I am still learning exactly what the stripe is, so I can't quite explain it perfectly. However, I do know that it's how you "play" at the finish line. By "play," I mean whether the driver decides to run to pass flat out and be on the gas pedal the whole way down the track without ever lifting your foot or if they decide to use the brake pedal.

As you can see, drag racing can be difficult to explain as a racer. I believe that the best way to understand it is to experience it!

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Kaytie Boyer is a twenty-year-old, 3-Dimensional Studies student at Bowling Green State University. Her hope is to focus on Ceramics. Kaytie has been racing at her local track, Summit Motorsports Park, for several years.