I never raced at a "legal" drag strip before. I live in Los Angeles, so needless to say, street drag racing is prohibited and strinctly enforced by local police (as im sure everywhere else, but more so in this city). The Irwindale speedway here in Los Angeles recently opened their doors to amateur drag racing. I was planning on going and time my 02 Z28.

I have never raced my car nor attempted to beat any car off the line. I am going to need to know the basics when I get to the speedway. I dont want to seem like a complete rookie when I get there. .

I own a 02 Z28 Automatic. I have heard people mention reving their cars to 1800-2200 rpm on the yellow light, then launching at the green. Can u rev an automatic engine up to those rpm levels and launching without damaging the engine? Does this only apply to manual transmissions?

What are the procedures with drag racing an automatic. I dont want to seem like a complete dufus, but any information i can get will be greatly appreciated.

Thank You.

 

For a stock auto:
Go around the waterbox..
Straighten up the car..
Do a super small burnout, no more than 5 sec.. You just want to clean your tires.
pull forward.
Make sure you are in OD.. it makes no difference to be in D and you cant effectively shift an auto that is computer controlled.
Do one dry hop to make sure you seem to be hooking..
Move forward to turn on the two top lights on the tree
Hold one foot on the brake.. the other hover over the gas
When you see the last yellow light, instantly switch pedal positions.. brake foot pulls of while the gas foot burys the pedal..
What this does is "flash" your stock torque converter so it effectively is like using a larger stall speed torque converter.
Hang on.. wait to see what you run.. repeat..

I would suggest waiting an hour btw runs to cool the motor some.. You can use ice on the intake manifold as well, but I am not sure how much that would cool these cars down as it is plastic..

After this, you will notice that you cant hook great and start looking for things to help. I suggest the suspension mods I did on my LT1..

 

also, just so you know, the only stupid question is the one that doesn't get asked! The question you ask may help someone else!

 

Well, psychocabbage pretty much summed it up for ya!!

To race an automatic, there's really not a lot involved. When you asked about revving the motor to 1800-2200 RPM, you can do that (maybe not quite as high, otherwise you'll start to break the back tires free) but maybe to about 1600 RPM --- this will have your revs up so you'll be quicker off the line when you go cause the motor is already where it's gotta be. However, what "psychocabbage" was saying about "flashing" the converter is also another common method --- basically, sit with your left foot on the brake, and your right foot ready to hit the gas --- then when you step on it, the motor gets to wind up and generate a lot of momentum, and it will throw a quick shot of power at the torque converter, but it won't lock til a little bit higher than if you were already pre-loading the converter (revving to ~1800 RPM). There are arguments as to which method is better, but when I went to the track with my car before, it didn't seem to matter which method I used --- my car stayed pretty consistent regardless.

Good choice going to the track to do your racing! It can be fun racing cars out of the blue on the street sometimes, but when you get busted for racing (and you're only 17!!) it really sucks!!! I found out the hard way!!!

Well, hope that helps!