my first pass at the track was in my dads 57 chevy and i took off in 3rd gear. ran a whopping 22 seconds lol. then when i turned 18 i had a 12 second malibu and never had a problem. that was 17 years ago and have had alot of decently fast cars ever since when money allows.
First off since you have street tires....DO NOT drive thru the water box. Drive around the water box and if needed back up to the area just forward of that. Then you could possibly do a small dry burnout. When you pull up to the starting line there will be two small yellow bulbs at the top of the tree. Slowly pull forward until you turn on both bulbs. When the starter pushes the button to start the tree there will be three larger yellow bulbs that will go off in succession. When the green light comes on you can go. As you get better most racers will leave when the third yellow bulb comes on...that way by the time you and the car react you will cut a good light as the green bulb comes on. Just take your time, relax, and have fun!! You might want to watch from the sidelines and see a few cars go down the track before you go.
It is also racer courtesy that if you pull up to pre stage before the other drive wait to stage until they pre stage. Also always pay attention to track officials, and with a car like that your gonna need a brain bucket.
I've always heard that but at my track it's impossible to drive around the water... What I do is burn the piss(water) out of the treads and then roll SLOWLY to the line... This cools the tire and hopefully picks up a bit of traction compound from the track... Using this method I've pulled a 1.87 best from my SC Marauder on the stock 245/55/18 BFGs(they suck even on a NA application) and low 1.9s in the 5.0 T-Bird on 225/50/16 street Michelins... I usually ran drag radials on the Bird, so was easy to launch but the street tires would come close to equaling the DRs... With high HP, stick and skinny tires you'll be lucky to get a 2.0 short time and if you don't have a helmet, you'll get bounced for anything faster than 14.00... Nowadays some tracks are requiring a helmet no matter what time you turn...
Look on the bright side, gives you time to get some sticky tires so you can have some fun... A high HP vehicle without traction sucks, the buildup on the starting line can seem more grease than rubber with traction worse than on the street...
Good water box advice from Gene there. The biggest thing to be aware of is that if you can't get around it.. you should roll through it.. since spinning the tires IN the box(especially treaded street tires) will toss water up into the wheel well and undercarriage to come back down onto the tires and track later when you stage/launch. Even a few drops of water is not a good situation if you're already traction limited to begin with. Sounds like you're well on your way to having a blast. Enjoy.
