What is the most important factor of car in drag race?

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Fj0911

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What is your ranking of factors like the engine, weight of car, aerodynamic body or not, etc, in a drag race?
I am a year 11 EAL student in south Australia, this question is relate to my research program, it's like an interview. Do anyone wants to write down your opinion underneath? Plz!!
 
What is the most important factor of car in drag race?

First of all : grip! you can have all the power you want,without grip from the tyres that power is useless.



Spy.
 
Tyre grip, then torque, then peak power. For a car to be set up well it needs to be as light as possible and have as little drag as possible - if it's going to reach very high speeds it might also need to generate some downforce.
 
I would have to say perfect balance of all previous mentioned. Grip is important but not if you dont have power. And vice versa. There are a lot of aspects that need attention. You can have really fat sticky slicks and 1000 hp, that would cover grip and power however, if your suspension is not set up you will break something and or crash.

I have seen a foxbody mustang have too much grip and too much power go down the track and come back with only 3 tires touching the ground because the driver thought grip and power was the solution. He over looked stiffening the chassis and as a result, twisted the body of the car to a point that it was completely trashed.

So really, most important aspect is the balance of; power, grip, chassis strength, weight, and in high end drag cars, reliability of the parts.

Tldr; balance...
 
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What I learned more recently is drag radials are different from bias ply slicks. Radials stick in a more extreme way, often being described as they either have traction at 100% or they have none. They don't slip like "normal" tires. When I talked with a drag team mechanic, he talked about how critical tire pressure is, even some clouds passing by can throw off the setup because the temperature changed. They can potentially keep adjusting until the very first staging light comes on, although that's really uncommon.

I think the typical setup of huge, wide rear tires and skinny, small tires in the front helps induce understeer so the cars have a tendency to drive straight. Another advantage to this setup is the small front tires induce much less drag, so that aids in acceleration for sure. I mean a lot of cars launch so hard the fronts lift off the ground temporarily, so all the more, they seem to be there out of necessity for steering around the pits - and when they start turning on track. I've seen demo cars do 150mph wheelies like nothing, they simply steer with two brakes (crazy, I know).

Another thing is, they pre-program the auto transmissions to shift at specific points. I don't know how similar transmissions are between classes, but I guess the main thing is there are very few gears, and the shifting is not often done by a human.

I too aim still trying to wrap my head around dragcar setups, I definitely don't claim to understand everything. It's not my go-to #1 motorsport, but as a casual fan I've tried to put some effort in to getting a clearer picture of what makes them fast.
 
Like others have said, all factors are equally important, they all need to come together as without one of them, you're still going nowhere fast. They also need to be balanced, as @allsupratt spoke about. The only thing I think you could do is list the order in which one you need first, but not which is most important.

Initially you need grip to get going. The bigger, softer and lower pressure the tire, the more grip it will provide. The tire needs to be able to put down the power to the tarmac that the engine is putting out. If it can't, it will start slipping, i.e wheelspin.

Weight plays a factor from the get go as well. No good having lots of power and a streamlined car in a drag race if it is extremely heavy. The less it weighs, the better.

Then you need power to get the car accelerating. You need enough to go fast and fight the friction at high speeds, but you need tires that can handle all of that power.

(Aside from obvious factors such as engine size making a difference to power output, the type of fuel that engine relies on makes a difference too. Different classes of drag car use different types of fuel, such as Methanol and NitroMethane. Far as I remember, NitroMethane does not actually "burn", you can throw a flaming rag on it and nothing will happen. It is compression that causes it to explode violently, and it shares an ingredient with TNT. Also, if you've never stood near a top fuel car, if you ever do, you'll essentially experience having tear gas sprayed in your eyes)

Last in the list of what works is aerodynamics. They don't really do much at low speeds, but for high speeds you need downforce to keep the car planted to the ground, yet also keep it aero efficient/streamlined to reduce drag. Without downforce, the air pushing against the car will cause it to take off.


If you've never been (or anyone else here) to watch drag racing in the flesh, I highly recommend it, it's quite an experience and you'll never forget it. Stand as close to the start as possible to be shaken like no nightclub or concert could ever come close to, and be left with the intense smells of burning rubber and exotic fuels as you see a car accelerate from 0-100mph in just three quarters of a second. Then take a trip to the finish line to see what 330mph looks like up close and the unique sound one of these monsters making it's way up the track. It almost sounds like the air is being ripped apart and you can both see and feel a shockwave coming.

I always find that when I'm at a drag event and they have F1, NASCAR, WEC etc on some spectator screens, they just feel so puny and slow to look at and listen to. I mean, any one of those cars could zip by a standing top fueller at full speed, and it would only take it 3 seconds to get going from nothing and re-overtake the car that blew by it at 220mph.
Or for another perspective; 2 TF cars racing each other have more power than the entire F1 grid combined.

Edit: Just remembered on old video, the figures are a little outdated (e.g 8000hp then, +11000hp now), but may be you might find it useful.

 
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Depends on the car. If you do not have much power than power is hugely important, the more the better. If you have lots of power then traction becomes very important. Shifting, gears and gear ratios and the like come after.
 
For thing, I'd like to praise you for discussing drag racing in a positive light. I often watch drag racing though not really a fanatic of it. One thing I think is the most important factor mostly is mental. The mental aspect mostly goes from staging to know when to shift. You can be too trigger-happy and end up getting a red light foul. Properly set up drag machine notwithstanding, you have to have the mental capacity to excel in drag racing. I think mental issues matter more in drag racing than even setting a machine up for power and speed.
 

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