As promised, here's a quick rundown on my first attempts at quarter mile racing. Most important, I had a lot of fun & learned a few things. I'm looking forward to trying it again sometime.
Four of us - Geneva (the principal at my school), her husband Mike, Ann-Marie & I - trailered two bikes (our ST2 and their Yamaha FZ6) down the hill to the Speedworld Drag Strip, just a little Northwest of Phoenix, AZ. They drove the trailer, and I drove their Honda Civic Si, which they wanted to run - it's a fun little car in a 6-speed manual!
We arrived, paid our money, suited up and rode over to tech inspection. The inspector asked me, of course, what was that god-awful noise, and I got to explain Duc dry clutches to him. Mike and I staged and, before I knew it, there was a green light in my face. Slow start, modest acceleration in the middle, then I slowed before the finish - the course itself was well lit, but there was this yawning blackness just past the finish and I had no idea how fast I'd have to slow down. (Right lane, 14.09 @ 85.21 mph)
Lined up for a second run & wound up paired with a young guy in a tuner Honda Civic. Got a better start and an OK drive through the finish. (Left lane, 12.99 - ok, 13.00 if rounded properly - @ 104.94 mph)
Lined up for a third run with Mike and, just as we were staging, the guy in the start house stopped us and held us at the line - I was too focused on getting to the line to have seen it, but in the pair just ahead of us a Mustang had gotten loose off the line, made it about an eighth of a mile before hitting the left wall & veering across the track to T-bone the right wall. Ann-Marie & Geneva got a little jolt of adrenaline as they saw us head for the line (out of their sight) about thirty seconds before a track worker came running back saying there'd been a big crash and the track was closed to clean up. Fortunately, it wasn't us and the Mustang driver walked away, though his car was just so much scrap metal. We cooled our heels for about 45 minutes as the track workers cleaned up the mess.
It was during this break that I realized my headlight -- high & low beams -- was dead, which would explain why the two runs I'd done felt like a strobe-lit disco as I sped through the bright patches of streetlight over the track; I thought it was just the adrenaline. When the track re-opened, Geneva tossed me the keys to their Honda and told me to give a car a try. I lined up next to an elderly gentleman in a C4 Corvette, and was a bit astounded to get a good gap on him off the line. Of course, that didn't last. I discovered that the Si has a VERY hard rev limiter and my shifting was way late - so every gear change was accompanied by the car bogging down and me desperately looking for the next gear. (Right lane, 16.24 @89.62 mph)
When I got back to our cars they were calling last run, and I figured they wouldn't notice or care that I was running without a headlight. Geneva saddled up -she's been drag racing since she was 14 (mostly modded VWs) but this was her first pass on a motorcycle. We staged, launched ... and I got TOO good a start, red-lighting by just 11 ten-thousandths of a second.
Still my best run of the night, though I know I could have gone a bit faster with a better drive off the line and better shift points. (Left Lane, 12.77 @ 106.43 mph)
