The Psychology Of Drag Racing
The Psychology Of Drag Racing – Burning — drag racing’s dirtiest trick, short of reaching out and ripping the other guy’s cables. It’s a starting line strategy that has caused controversy and calamity at all levels of drag racing, and recently the NHRA shocked the crowds and commentators when it backed drivers Mason McGaha and Bruno Massel off the track and disqualified them for taking extreme training after three. minutes of standing in line waiting for the other guy to make his move. Debate erupted over whether or not they should have been allowed to see through their games, as has happened in the past, or whether the line in the proverbial sand had to be drawn at some point. First we’ll look at what burning is and how it can be used strategically, then we’ll dig into some of the best examples of drag racing’s most infamous moments.
To understand the drag racing mechanism that burnout exploits, you must first understand how the starting line procedure works. While there are many ways to set things in motion, everything from lanterns to matching draped clothing is the Christmas tree found at almost every staged event. Its main function in producing a race is to help drivers position their cars on the line and give them a countdown to
The Psychology Of Drag Racing
Signal. At the top are two tiers of yellow lights known as stage lights, which coincide with a pair of stage beams on the track. Drivers roll into the pre-stage beams first, which gives them some kind of warning before they approach the preparation beam that will time the run. The general courtesy here is for one driver to take the lead and wait for the next driver to do the same, before both soon roll forward enough to activate the lights on the starting line. Once both drivers are in the beam, the starter flips a switch and the shaft drops. A key feature of most trees is the auto-start timer that starts when a driver moves from the pre-stage beams to the step beams, which will usually put a seven-second time limit on the second driver after the first driver has completely run through . On the surface, it would make it appear that a burn on the line is avoided if the second driver automatically loses a run, but it is that very clock that applies the pressure in a burn. The NHRA rules, which define the procedures for many other series as well, have nothing about how long it takes to stage, only that drivers must
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Listen to the starter and stage them at their command. “A reasonable amount of time will be allowed for drivers to stage. The time limit will be set at the sole and absolute discretion of the official starter,” the book states in the race procedures. “Failure to comply with the holder’s instructions is a possible reason for disqualification,” is the warning that ended the burning of Massel vs. McGaha.
If you’ve ever been down a drag strip, even if it was just once, there’s a momentum that builds once you leave the staging lanes and approach the burnout box. It’s routine, of course. You are excited by the officials through exhaustion before being quickly loaded into the stage beams. In that psychological checklist of operations, one step after another is quickly crossed off until the only thing left is to stage and begin the final tree countdown. Clearly, we’re here to compete and there’s a certain expectation that this setup routine will play out more or less the same way every time until the burn comes into play with one or both drivers playing in purposefully the organizing process to delay it. . The mechanical element is easy to predict: the longer it idles, the more fuel it wastes, or if you catch the other guy with a two-speed rev limiter, you can force their hand to overheat. But the mind game is the most weaponized.
They define it in sports psychology as the pre-performance routine, a set of behaviors that lead to an athlete’s performance. The batter’s ground taps and wide finish, the boxer’s sign of the cross that connects to their controlled breathing, that tiny moment that aligns their mindset, with the last step of that routine signaling their impending competition. The concept is that these routines fill in the distractions and purposefully focus the mind on the task at hand. With drag racing, the structure and pacing before the assembly gets the drivers in the same state of mind and, consciously, the drivers have their own pre-performance routines as they focus on the tree. Violation of this routine is by far, at the heart of burning, the greatest harm.
A classic example is the 1971 matchup between Don Garlits and Steve Carbone, which resulted in an upset victory thanks to Carbone’s competitive revenge. The two had become rivals at times each time, and the story goes that it was Garlits who first burned Carbone in 1968 when he even took the time to start the burnout. Carbone had entered the scene as usual, cooling his tires as Garlits meandered through the exhaust box. The man never forgot that, even after winning the world championship in 1969, and when his chance came in the final round of the 1971 Nationals at Indy, he put the pressure on Garlits in the most familiar way possible. To his credit, he overtook Big Daddy’s latest rear-engined Swamp Rat and got his revenge when Garlits’ overheated Hemi overshot the track.
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Rivalries aside, some engines are the target of burnouts more than others. In classes with mixed power additions (turbocharger, nitrous, supercharger) like NHRA’s Pro Mods, engines can differ greatly in how they apply power. Notably, and infamously, turbocharged cars need a smoother run during stalling to have enough boost when the light turns green. The belt-driven supercharger and solenoid-triggered nitrous fillers can respond immediately off the line and take very little time to stage. Drivers will use this to their advantage to force the hand of a driver in a turbocharged car who will need time to sit on the chip and spin the turbos – and they need to keep it running or risk having to start. all over again. This aspect of mounting with various power additions can be used to either force the driver of a turbo car to downshift, or conversely, sit on the gears so long as to overheat the stressed running gear.
The big leagues aren’t the only place where a burn shakes things up. This Street Car Shootout clip shows just how much the game can go both ways. It looks like the Nova is last in the pre-staging as it slowly hammers it into place and from there it awaits the Mustang, which if I had to guess, looks turbocharged. Already wise to these shenanigans, they hold on until the Fox crashes into the stage beams, but apparently accidentally overshoots and rolls across the starting line. That kind of skid would normally red light the round, but Nova still holds, giving the Mustang a technical gap to back him up and force Nova to stage. The parting moment between Nova’s final stage shot and the green light falling is the moment everyone is waiting for, like a shootout in a wilder western time. The trouble seems to have paid off, not only are they slower, but Nova is driving the local mosquito population to extinction with oil. You’d wonder if that thing got hot.
One of the most infamous burns in drag racing is still the Warren Johnson vs. Scott Geoffrion showdown at the now defunct Houston Raceway Park. Despite starting there, Geoffrion had parted ways with Johnson’s team two years earlier for the factory Dodge team, and Johnson wasn’t known for being the most forgiving guy in the sport, with this 1994 burn amounting to peak. While we can talk about the cars all day, their technology is awesome and their performance amazing given the resources, but it’s the extension of these very real human dramas behind the scenes that can make a burn so memorable for fans. When most people think of sports, they think of traditional sports like baseball, basketball, American football, soccer, etc. When people think of sports psychology, they often think of the same sports plus Olympic disciplines like gymnastics, track and field, and swimming. When I think of sports, I think of auto racing. I grew up with my dad at drag strips in Iowa and then married a drag racer. For the past 25 years my husband has driven a rear engine dragster in the NHRA classes and I have been the pit crew. As a professor of psychology at McKendree University and an AASP Certified Mental Performance® Consultant, I have been able to identify unique aspects of sports psychology in auto racing. Many