Well, I've had the 'Vette over 5 years, and here I am about to sell it, and I've never taken it to the track. Of course, being a sports car, the more appropriate thing to do would be to autocross. But since I live only 5 minutes from Houston Raceway Park it at least made sense for me to find out how it (and I) could do in the quarter mile.

It was a lot of fun. I didn't know what to expect, so for anyone contemplating going to the drag strip, I'll tell you how it all works. There are a lot of people there for Friday Night "Safe Street Night." The object of this is to keep the teenagers off of Westheimer and 11th Street and let them race someplace safe. The don't run the scoreboard, and you only get your half of the timeslip. (That's why they're all torn, below.)

I drove into the gate with my son, Jesse. I had to sign a release that said I wouldn't hold them responsible for any damage, then I paid them, $15 for the car, plus $8 for Jesse (the spectator). Not a bad price for some great entertainment!

Then I drove around to "tech out." Theoretically this would be where the car is checked out to ensure that it's all legal, but since this isn't real racing, I just had to fill out my name, address, and phone number, and they used shoe polish to put a number on my windshield and on the passenger-side window.

Then I lined up with everyone else. They have a bunch of narrow rows set up, and I just drove up and waited my turn. I suppose if I had intended to race someone specific, I'd have lined up in front of or behind them. After awhile, they let our row go. The engines all started and we hurried on up around the corner to the track, each car pulling into the left or right lane, more or less alternately but I just got in the line that looked a little shorter. My first two runs I mad in the left lane and the last two in the right lane.

When the cars in front of you pull up to the starting line, you pull up onto the track, like being on-deck in baseball. Once they go, you will want to do a bit of a burnout to get your tires warm. It was really cold and I figure I didn't get mine warm enough, because they didn't hook up very well.

Then I pulled up to the starting line. There are two small staging lights at the top, and you drive up until the top one comes on. For some reason, they had us pull up a bit further until the second one came on. When both cars are set, the lights start, three yellows then the green. The first time, I waited for the green, but this was part of the reason that my reaction time was so bad. When I lined up again I asked some guys and they told me to start as soon as the third yellow came on. If you're too fast, you'll go across the start line before the green, but a normal car can't get there that fast.

My car is an automatic, so I ran the RPMs up to about 1800 while sitting on the brake, then let off the brake and floored the gas at the third yellow light. This worked pretty well, except I had a whole lot of wheelspin. On the last run, I only revved it up to about 1200, but it didn't affect my time much.

Here are the timeslips, and video from the first two runs. (I forgot to charge the camcorder battery... so you only get to see the races I lost.) Jesse also taped a couple of other races, not knowing that the battery was going to go out. (It said it had several minutes left.) I'll put those up sometime. One has a 69 Camaro, and the other a Dodge Charger. The Charger had the front wheels off of the ground. Of course, the cars in the other lanes could have been anything. The Charger was "racing" a Nissan Sentra, I believe. My first two runs were against a Firebird of some sort and a Camaro SS with an LS1. The Firebird blew me away, partly because I got a slow start, but I didn't lose too much to him after that. The Camaro pulled out first and just kept pulling away, but with his 340 hp to my 230... what would you expect?

Third run, there was a Dodge pickup next to me. We started about the same but I pulled ahead. Didn't beat him by much. Final run was someone like me, I think. He was in a Firebird, and I got a great jump on him, so he must have waited for the green. He was really getting close by the end of the quarter, though... had to be doing 100.

Here's the video of the Camaro.

And here's the Charger and the Sentra... if the guy could have kept the front wheels on the ground he'd have been a lot faster. The end of this is pretty funny.

On this run, my reaction time (1.31 seconds) was awful. Basically that's because I had very little idea of what I was doing. Afterward, someone told me to start when the third light came on, and I would not be in danger of crossing the line before the green. Still, the run was okay, 14.883 seconds at 94.98 mph. That's about what I expected from this car. My back tires aren't even V rated, so they didn't stick very well and I got a slow start.	This was better, but the .902 reaction still wasn't very good. This was also the slowest run. The car didn't want to upshift into third and I had to back off of the gas a bit to get it to shift. This run was about a half second slower than the rest.	Third time was the best. My reaction time was okay (I guess) and I ran 14.704 at 94.51. Interesting that the final velocity was so close on each run. Of course, the elapsed time really isn't that far apart in any case either.	Fourth run, 14.737 at 93.65. I could have stayed longer. I was only there from 7:00 until about 8:30.
Run 1 Video (Windows Media File WMF)	Run 2 Video (Windows Media File WMF)

Houston Raceway Park, January 24, 2004