Since the beginning when drag racing began it has always been about innovation and being a step ahead of the competition. This week I want to talk about a few of the technology advancements that most racers use today and how they are beneficial. I plan to talk about the use of delay boxes, air or electric shifters, and parachutes.
A delay box is a timing system that is run through a trans brake. With a trans brake once you engage it locks the car in first and reverse allowing you to leave at a lot higher rpm. With knowing this a delay box helps a driver have more consistent reaction times. With a delay box you hold down a button on the steering wheel and put your foot to the floor which makes the car come up on a chip which is however high you want the car to rev to. When the Christmas tree starts to come down you release the button when you see the first yellow bulb light up and then the car will sit there for however long you have your delay set for. The advantage to this setup is if you let go of the button consistently you can change the delay timing in the box to make your lights better which in turn normally wins more races.
With cars that drive on the roads today most shift themselves, but it hasn’t always been like that in the racing industry. When I first started racing in a door car I had to shift the car manually from low gear to high gear. Not long ago though an automated shifted was made that bolted to the back of the shifter that would shift your car at whatever rpm you choose. Most of these shifters are either powered by air from a co2 tank or electric. Some advantages to using one of these is that it is one less thing that the driver has to worry about going down the track. Also, it is more consistent since you just set a specific rpm for it to shift at and if shifts at the same spot every time.
Like I had stated about a lot of things have changed in the industry one of the big things is the speeds that cars are exceeding. Hen racing first started most cars didn’t even exceed 100mph but now a top fuel dragster is capable of exceeding speeds of 330mph. With speeds like these your normal disc brakes can only help but so much which is why the parachute was invented. A parachute is strapped to the back of a competitor’s car and is held in by a pin. This pin is connected to a cable that goes to a lever inside the car which is what the driver pulls to deploy it. Now parachutes are actually a requirement on some cars now depending on how fast they go. Cars that go 150mph or more are required to have at least one parachute and cars that exceed 200mph are required to have two. Parachutes can help save a race since whenever a driver gets sideways it should always be your first instinct to pull the chute since the air that goes into the chute will help to straighten the car out.
The world of racing is still constantly evolving and new innovations are made each year. In this post I only touched on a few of the ones that I have used. Hopefully this was able to provide you with more knowledge about the world of drag racing.
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