Love it but it's been a long time since I've made a pass. So long I've though about running my Harley for a nice 20 second pass!
I've been racing brackets for over 25 years, mainly because of the love for the sport! Also the comraderie of the other racers is a special family...the cost in general is low for budgets so anyone can get in it! Heads up is good too if you have a sponsor or should say a few...Horsepower cost money and the one with the most wins on most Racedays!
In heads up... if the low 8's dragster shows up, ain't no-one in the 8's competing? Run what you brung or go home... Bracket racing is awesome. I competed and won with a 12 second Mustang II. Not bad for a 15 year old paying for Cam2 off his weekend job through highschool.
I have been drag racing on and off for 40 years, and I don't see any (or much) comraderie in bracket racing..........at least here in NorCal. Now 30/40 years ago drag racer used to be a real family when they were at the strip. If someone brought there young kids the girlfriends and wifes of other racers who didn't have kids would help watch the little ones. Case in point, when we were at SIR (I raced an SS/IA Camaro) I went out in the 3rd round and another guy who was still in the hunt broke his rearend housing (we were low bucks racers back then and didn't carry spare rearends, trans, engines) so I took mine out and he used it to into the semi-finals.....sorry, I just don't see that now days. For me, heads up racing is the pinnacle of what drag racing is all about. Maybe racing in the "Glory Days" spoiled me, but now days it's just not the same......................and the crowds just aren't there...............I want my cake and it to....................I want to go fast and have fun doing it!
Its been 12 years but I loved it, the competitors become like family. Trying to stay with in your dial in and getting to the finish line first is all ways fun..Once I went to a pro catigory every thing changed, became more of a money pit rather than fun, the cool thing was being the fast guys at the track. Bracket racing is a rather inexpensive, and allways very competitive way to go for the buck..
Bracket Racing is a lot of fun. It just seems like now that I'm retired I have so much more to do. The track in Tucson here went IHRA and they don't run the sportsman class anymore. Most of the cars in the no box class run trannybrakes and can run down into the 7's. I was one of the faster cars in the Sportsman class in the low 12's. The closer track to me is Firebird and they are still NHRA and do not allow tranny brakes in Sportsman. I race there now. I still love the people that race but the track management $ucks these days and they only care about the almighty dollar. They''ll try to squeeze the last one out of you. If I could get a decent price for my car it'd be gone quickly.
A few points. Bracket racing is a great start. If you put 100% effort into it, you'll learn things that will become absolutely critical if you decide to run heads up. Like learning the weather and how it affects your car. Staging depth. Track conditions. etc. Bracket racers (well the good ones) know exactly what effect a 100' change in DA will make on their program. One of the very good points made about bracket racing is that you go as fast as your budget allows. If you have an income that allows you to build/buy a 6 sec 200+ mph dragster, go for it. If you are living paycheck to paycheck (like I am), a 14 second car is just as competitive as any other car on the track-and generally costs a lot less to build/maintain. Bracket racing is and always will be more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge. There are SO many things to think about when you're perfecting your program...both on and off the track! Heads up racers are a different breed. Always looking for the extra hundredth of a second edge over the competition. THAT....is also what makes heads up racing significantly more expensive. It eats up ALL of your free time, much of your resources, and sometimes costs you family problems and the like. Like I said, good heads up racers are a different breed-or should I say it takes a different breed to be a good heads up racer. Many of the heads up racers are like circle track racers. Lets say I was running a DOT tire class. Some of those guys are running into the 8's now (maybe in the 7's?) in the 1/4 mile on street tires. What originally started out as a budget class for entry level heads up racers turned into he who spend the most money usually win. Locals here are running in the 5's on 275 DOT radials (not drag radials either), with 632" and larger engines making well over 1000 HP. The engines alone on some of them are upward of $40,000 investment. This is usually what happens with heads up classes. Some call it progress. Heads up is less of a mental game. Anyone can spend a little money and buy a few more horsepower or buy a little more traction. A somewhat decent compromise is index racing. Sort of like a bracket race but both cars leave the line at the same time, many times on a .400 pro tree. I have had lots of fun running a 6.00 index, even ran a 7.50 index a few years ago with the rustang-which normally runs 7.00. Stand on the brakes.
The main reason I love bracket racing is I am not interested in points runs or spending every weekend at the track. It's a great sport for someone that wants to hit the strip on occasion and wants a chance at getting some bang for the buck. Hell, most of the time I just went for test and tune so I could make some passes and get a time slip to show off.
I don't race but I do like to watch. Bracket racing you can bring home a trophy with your 28 second tow truck if your time is always the same. Why spend money to go fast when you don't have to go fast to win. Today you can go too fast and loose. Losing a race because your car went too fast doesn't sound like a race to me.
You took the words right out of my mouth. There are at least two things you can never have enough of...................... HP.................................TQ, on a naturally aspirated motor! What fun is it to do the 1/4 in 28 seconds..............with the airconditioning on and Cream on the 8 track...................maybe for some people, and I respect that..........................it's just not for me.
If I guess the right time I win? I thought it was suppose to be 1/4 mile racing, not the price is right!!?
bracket racing has its place and will always be here. ive never competed in any bracket racing. im sure i would have fun doing if i tried. i find watching bracket racing, especially the electronic class's with delay boxes really boring. i have competed in some heads up racing and that was really fun. defiantly would be expensive to be competitive enough to win but i participated for the experience.
Bracket racing is OK for slow cars to have fun and to play with the daily driver to have some competition. But I dont see any point in paying big money on your cars to run the same time over and over. I would like to do the stock eliminator stuff some day. I think thats what its called. Where you run a basically stock car, can change some things within the rules. Pretty much a tuning, simple mods, and driving competition that runs heads up within your class.
