Took the Prius Drag Racing!

[cwerdna]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Aug 28 2006, 10:03 AM) [snapback]310595[/snapback]</div>

The ET sounds about right but the MPH is about 10mph too fast 87mph in the 1/4 would mean a 15sec ET.
[/b]

I concur. 87 mph at the end of the 1/4 for a Prius sounds extremely unlikely given its weight and amount of power. 78 sounds about right.

I posted about this discrepency before at http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=1...70&#entry240670. My Maxima mentioned in that thread had 255 hp, weighed 3218 lbs and was also FWD.

[molgrips]

Drag racing is one of very few athletic contests...[/b]

C'mon guys, it's not an athletic contest is it? I mean really... Of course if you are racing some super dragster it might toss you around a little, but it's not exactly the Iron Man...

[tnthub]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(molgrips @ Aug 29 2006, 04:23 AM) [snapback]311018[/snapback]</div>

C'mon guys, it's not an athletic contest is it? I mean really... Of course if you are racing some super dragster it might toss you around a little, but it's not exactly the Iron Man...
[/b]

If it were not an athletic contest then the driver would not make much difference in the outcome. I understand stick and ball sports typically require a higher level of endurance, but especially in bracket racing, the driver is an extremely large part of a winning combination.

My last full year of points I only had my regular vehicle for five of the 16 contests and still managed to enter the final weekend within striking distance of the points leader (second place). Over the course of the season I raced rental cars, dealer demo loaner vehicles, my mom's car, my mother in Law's car, and my beater 1990 Lincoln...

I also skiied professionally when I was younger, played semi-professional table tennis, and raced a stock car for two seasons at our local tracks. The concentration, awareness of of the complete environment, sensitivity to change, staging process, burnout process, and the repeated perfection necessary to compete in events that take multiple days against a high level of competition, the knowledge of body chemistry, digestion, hydration, the stress of being in a single elimination style event and the money that is on the line, the crowds of fans and spectators, the variances in weather, and awareness of all the intricacies of the vehicle and track conditions and the elements of heat... Just try sitting in a hot black car with the windoes up in a fire suit for half an hour on a 100 degree sunny day, all add up to an athletic contect of extremely short duration that takes a significant toll on the body, and then repeat that process six or ten times during the course of the day and perform better than your competitor.

Just becasue it isn't physical in the sense of trying to tackle a guy with a ball doesn't mean it is not athletic.

Are ski jumpers athletes? Are ice skaters athletes? Are motorcycle jumpers athletes? Is Tiger Woods an athlete?

I know that four middle age overweight fellows drinking beer, riding around in a cart, and losing balls at a country club are not athletes but people who play professionally are most certainly athletes of the highest caliber. I'm not talking about a few gearheads doing burnouts on a Friday night trying to impress their ladies and win a twenty dollar bet, I am talking about people who work their bodies through exercise, have practice trees, and develop skills to the point where they are better than their peers to a degree that a real drag racer can usually race a very long time against normal people without losing....

I have a cousin who played semi-pro baseball. His skill level was so much higher than any of the rest of us it was crazy, and he still wasn't good enough to break into the majors....

Yea, drag racing is a sport but many of the people who participate are not athletes. Some of us however do take it very seriously and people who do it professionally are in every way athletes.

[240sxer]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(cwerdna @ Aug 29 2006, 12:39 AM) [snapback]311014[/snapback]</div>

I concur. 87 mph at the end of the 1/4 for a Prius sounds extremely unlikely given its weight and amount of power. 78 sounds about right.

I posted about this discrepency before at http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=1...70&#entry240670. My Maxima mentioned in that thread had 255 hp, weighed 3218 lbs and was also FWD.
[/b]

Yeah, he must have written it wrong. There is no way one could be trapping 10mph faster than everyone else and still running the same times. The prius seems to run about a 17.6@78mph most of the time. Which is far from fast, but isn’t exactly slow either. The trap speed is pretty quick.

Keeping it in B I don't think would do anything because even when you have it in "B" mode when the car is stopped the engine will be off. The issue is you need the ICE to be on from the moment you press the gas. If you've ever noticed if you floor the car from a stop it initially is electric, and a moment later the ICE engages giving you that rush of power. This slight lag is enough to cut the 60ft down probably .3 slower than it should be which ultimately cuts the 1/4 mile down probably .5 slower than it could be. It wouldn’t surprise me that with a good launch technique, good conditions, and not a whole lot of gas you could get a prius into the high 16s. I couldn’t do it because I’m at 2800ft. So I could only do it corrected, which is kinda lame, who knows what the correction factors are on a prius (probably as much as any other N/A gas car but people will dispute it).