As I'm sitting here watching the semis of the Winter Nationals at Pomona, a message pops up on the screen that says the NHRA is going to .000 as a perfect reaction time. I assume this will be for .400 tree as well as the .500. To explain it they said the reaction clock will start when the light turns green. So if you break the starting line beam when the light turns green you will have a .000 reaction time. Cool. Is this old news? First I heard of it.

 

LED lights too. Lots of redlights today.

 

Years ago they used to use a .000 as a perfect light so it's not a new idea. Some older timing systems still give .000 as a perfect light.

Starting this year they have gone back to that kind of timing system. I think the main reason is so fans will only need to see how far from perfect the reaction time is. Not everyone understands .400 or .500 lights. They see a Pro get a .420 green light and a sportsman racer get a .420 red light. Anything quicker (red light) is simply a negative number. Nothing else in the timing system has changed. If you used to be able to cut .520 lights, they will now be .020 lights.

The LED lights are only on the yellows. Too many bulbs were failing causing re-runs. The nitro cars shook the tree too much and caused the bulbs to fail. The LED lights will take more abuse but also illuminate quicker.