Legalizing delay-boxes in the 'lower-classes' (NHRA 'Heavy', IHRA 'Modified', and 'Street') wouldn't be helpful, IMHO.
You'd get the 'sore-loser' who can't 'cut-it' in S/P or TOP drop to the lower classes, and beat the snot outta the beginners.
When the kid in a 5-litre Rustang can't win a round in his street car, he'll take his car, girl-friend, & buddies elsewhere (movies, mini-golf, etc.), and the 'future' of the sport dries-up (and the tracl loses customers, too...).
You are correct; you DO have to adjust your car to 'conditions', but, BELIEVE ME, nobody who wins with ANY regularity 'plans' on wheel-spin as part of his 'package'.
Try bigger tires to stop the wheel-spin; deeper gears to 'quicken' the car's physical RT, then a 'loose converter', to 'adjust' the car's RT (lower RPM to 'slow-down' your RT/higher RPM for quicker lights) as needed.
My '82 Vette is a piece of 'junk', as far as 'bracket-racing' is concerned. A 200 HP Cross-Fire, 2.87:1 rear gears, a 'tight' converter, and 'hard' BFG TAs.
Deep-staged, and 'pushing' the Tree for all it's (& I'm!) worth, it still gives me .580/.600 RTs, WITH wheel-spin (it DOES have 3.06:1 1st gear ratio), but shallow-staging, leaving from idle on the SECOND bulb, results in foul-starts.
With no 'traction' (BFG TAs), and no 'adjustability' (a tight converter), I'm 'stuck' in the .580/.600 range, unless I change MY Reaction Time, which I refuse to do. I practiced 3 YEARS before I ever took the Z28 to join points, and 'I' am very consistent.
The Z28 sat 9 years, until last Fall, when I 'hit' a test-n-tune. My only run that night, after all that time, was a .514 RT. This Spring, my first light was .508, so I don't wanna go 'goofing' myself-up (any more than I am ALREADY goofed-up...), trying to be competitive in the '82 Vette.
I'm getting 3.73s put-in this month, and this Winter, I may be getting a looser converter for the 700R4, and I have a pair of 'sticky-streets' in my garage, just laying there..... :thumbs:

 

If I could borrow those "Sticky Tires" in your garage, we could see if Wheel Spin effects RT. Maybe this is my solution: (Launch at higher RPM and Spin Wheel Less) That should provide better ETs also.

Wished you lived close by; guess I'll have to buy my own "Sticky Tires".

Thanks for the input. I am on a mission now ("Sticky Tires") :D

 

I am not of legalizing the delay box in all classes either.

Will I agree the driver still has to reac consisitently, in the example Glen gave with his car his is going .580. With a delay box, he does what he needs to remove the .08 and bingo, he is in the .50s without changing a thing on him or the car. A non box guy has to try different things to get to .50 and then he is all screwed up and therefore no longer consistent.

 

I saw this today on another board. Interesting that the box racers have a pretty poor record against the best footbrakers out there. Attached to this initial post below were few similar posts from other tracks around the country and in most cases the footbrakers had the better record by a wide margin. Interesting!!!

*******************************

Interesting stats...

At Beaver Springs Dragway in PA, they have a Top Gun type shootout every week among the winners of Top, Mod, Street, and Bike. Top won only 5 of the runoffs out of 20 events...
http://www.beaversprings.com/eliminator%2003.html

At Quaker City, we run a Box/No-Box combo every Friday. Box cars have won 3 out of 11.

Michael Beard

**************************************** ************

 

I have a theory on this subject, but I will ask you to 'note' the quote about "...the BEST footbrakers out there... (I capitalized the word 'BEST' myself here).
The 'BEST', or even VERY GOOD, footbraker is better than ALL but the best 'box-racer' for a very simple reason; HE (the footbraker) has figured-out just 'HOW' to accomplish the same things (consistent low RTs, 60's, ETs, etc.) with-out all the gadgetry (delay-box, throttle-control, air/RPM shifter, etc.).
ANY 'shaved-ape' can look at a time-slip, see '.532 RT', and say, "I'll take thirty (.030) out of the box here!", but a foot-braker has to 'do-it' mechanically (raise/lower RPM, front PSI, stage-location, etc.).
P.S.: I heard that Michael Beard won the $50,000 Summit World Championship this season; is that true?

 

Here's the deal on reaction times. By definition, Reaction Time is the time that elapses after (before, too) the green light lights and the front wheels roll out and unblock the beam of light that starts the ET clock and also stops the RT timer. On the conventional "sportsman" tree, .500 seconds elapse between the last amber and the green. The car has a reaction time. Tires that don't spin, help the car have a more consistant reaction time. WHEN you leave, relative to the bulb lighting sequence, and where you leave FROM, both affect RT. If your comfort spot, looking at the tree, causes slow reaction times, stage deeper. If you get red lights from a shallow stage, leave later on the tree. This is a matter of adjusting your staging position and tree "trigger point" to match up to produce good lights. Which is better, deep or shallow staging? It all depends on you and your car. Neither is inherently "better". Good luck, happy practicing, and...

RACE ON!!!

 

I think Beard won the IHRA stock championship this year, but not sure about the SWC.

 

I agree with setting your "window". I practice with a Portatree Eliminator 2000 using their National Event Tree and a foot switch in my car. I wrote an application which interfaces to the practice tree and one of the features is a statistics page. Here is a screen capture from todays practice. You can see that there is a histogram which represents the repetitions and a Gaussian distribution. The better (more consistent) you are the narrower the distribution will be. By doing lots of repetitions you become more consistent and hopefully in the course of real eliminations you will get lucky and not have one of the 'bad' events.

:smash:

 

Another thing to consider, among all other variables that affect your reaction time, is to be well rested on the event day. This year I had to work late hours on four of the five races that I attended. It shows with 4 RED lights on four events and a .521 on the fifth.

 

"Gaussian"???

For a minute there, I thought this was the "Euro-Car Forum"..... :thumbs:

When I raced 'seriously', I 'hung' my practice tree off the rear-view mirror, in the staging lanes, practicing before EACH and EVERY run. I have a foot-pedal switch mounted on the floor-board, next to the 'skinny' pedal.
(Sometimes, I catch the guy behind me in the lanes, 'gawking' as the thing lit-up, ".51x, .52x, .52x, .50x, .51x,.....". A few times, I'm SURE the poor guy was 'beat' before we got pulled-out...)
If you have a BIONDO-box, set-up the 'other-side' to have .520 every run, and knock-off a few hundred at a time, with a good 15-20 seconds 'between' each light. I shot for a 'winning-percentage' of 70% (at LEAST), with no more than 5 fouls per 100...
Another thing to watch (as SIMPLE as this sounds!) is your caffeine (spelling?)intake. For YEARS, I drank nothing buy caffeine-free soda, YEAR-round (you're picky about the fuel in the CAR'S tank, aren't you?).

I also remember Gary Ormsby & Lee Beard finding U.S.Navy data that chicken and/or pasta the night before missions released something in the brain (Gaussia?) that increased hand/eye skills. From '89 until his death in August of '91, G.O. pounded opponents on the line..... I'd dine on chicken parmesian the evening before races. Did it work? I don't know for 'sure', but I 'thought' it did...
:thumbs:

 

That's one of the 25 cent words I learned when I took statistics in college a long time ago. :cheers: