New NHRA math 1/4 mile = 1000 feet

imported_Gears

imported_Gears

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Out of concerns for safety the NHRA is cutting 320 feet from Top Fuel and Funny Car races. The other classes will continue to use a real 1/4 mile, 1320 feet.
 
Good idea.



How long does it take an out-of-control top fuel funny car to travel 320ft at the end of a run?



Oh, less than a second. Hmmm - maybe 320ft won't make a difference.



How about a big stretchy net to catch the ones that can't stop? There's gotta be a solution that's better than simply moving up the finish line.
 
I think this is a great idea and it'll solve a lot of problems. The highest level of stress that the car sees is at the last 320 feet and it's normally the area where the big problems happen. This will also give the car an extra 320 feet of room to slow down.
 
F1, Indy and ALMS cars have minimum track requirements to ensure that when the cars are at top speed and something goes wrong they have the room to safely reduce speed and stop. Why not NHRA Top level? Asking a car going as fast as they do to stop in such a short distance and to have almost no backup other than a net and a tire barrier to stop them when it all goes wrong is just negligent. All the new tracks have long slow down areas that are even up hill! Shortening the run to 1000ft was a quick reaction to a tragedy and did nothing other than give them an extra 320ft. Would that extra space have helped Scott... probably not.



NHRA should have stopped going to the tracks without sufficient slow down areas until they could have been lengthened or slowed the cars down.
 
Sounds like a knee jerk reaction.



So right now the teams have optimized their cars for the 1320 ft run. By the time the finish line comes up they are running right on the edge. The closer to losing it the better. Wouldn't they simply adjust to do the same thing in a 1000ft run? If the machine is at a high level of stress in the last 320ft wouldn't they re-engineer to reach that stress point earlier?



Maybe had they instead mandated that current tracks build longer run offs by adding an extra 300 feet or more safety barriers, a good number of the tracks would not have been able to comply for financial or physical location reasons. Maybe that's the reason.
 
White_07_G6_GT said:
F1, Indy and ALMS cars have minimum track requirements to ensure that when the cars are at top speed and something goes wrong they have the room to safely reduce speed and stop. Why not NHRA Top level? Asking a car going as fast as they do to stop in such a short distance and to have almost no backup other than a net and a tire barrier to stop them when it all goes wrong is just negligent. All the new tracks have long slow down areas that are even up hill! Shortening the run to 1000ft was a quick reaction to a tragedy and did nothing other than give them an extra 320ft. Would that extra space have helped Scott... probably not.



NHRA should have stopped going to the tracks without sufficient slow down areas until they could have been lengthened or slowed the cars down.
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From talking to my dad who used to race back in the 60's, the tracks built back then were shorter than the ones built today because funny cars and top fuel dragsters didn't go as fast as they do today and didn't need as much room to slow down. Unfortunately, as the cars continued to get faster and faster, modifications were not made to the old tracks to lengthen them.
 
Brandon1 said:
I dont see what 320 ft is gonna do while you are already goin 400000000000000mph lol. That dont make sense.
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320 is almost a quarter of a quarter mile. So the cars will not be capable of reaching the speed they would with a full quarter of a mile and this gives them another 320 to slow down. I would say it does make sense.
 
Yal said:
Sounds like a knee jerk reaction.



So right now the teams have optimized their cars for the 1320 ft run. By the time the finish line comes up they are running right on the edge. The closer to losing it the better. Wouldn't they simply adjust to do the same thing in a 1000ft run? If the machine is at a high level of stress in the last 320ft wouldn't they re-engineer to reach that stress point earlier?



Maybe had they instead mandated that current tracks build longer run offs by adding an extra 300 feet or more safety barriers, a good number of the tracks would not have been able to comply for financial or physical location reasons. Maybe that's the reason.
Click to expand...



yeah they'll retune the cars so that they're going as fast as they can at the 1000 ft mark now, but they won't be going as fast so you won't have as much drag and resistance against the drivetrain causing a higher strain on everything.



As for having all of the tracks meet a specific safety level by making the sand pit longer, shut down area longer, etc. It's extremely difficult to do this at many of the tracks that they currently run at. As it was mentioned already most of these tracks were built in the 60s and at the time nothing was around them, then as the nearby cities expanded most of the track have now ended up in the middle of the city, and several of them even have roads that go by right at the end of the current sand pit.



That's exactly what the track was like at Englishtown were Scott had his accident, the main road leading into town is just a few feet after the end of the sandpit. Another track that I have been to that they run at is National Trail Raceway, last year when I went to a Buick event there a GNX that lost it's brakes after trapping about 135 mph it drove right through the sandpit, through the net, and across the street that was right after the sandpit. Now that's with a car going way less than 1/2 the speed the top fuel cars are going.
 
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