DA corrected vs uncorrected times

So I went to the local drag strip (Sacramento Raceway, basically sea level) this past Wednesday, it was ridiculously hot and humid, with a DA of high 2000's and touching low 3000's throughout the day. Could not get the car to make a clean 1-2 shift, the Lund tune has it set so aggressive that it would just blow the tires off no matter which way I tried, but that's a different discussion. Car is stock with the FF tune, A6 3.55

Anyways,
My best time was a 12.5 @ 113, which the dragtimes calculator is correcting to 12.1 @ 116.

Now before I go telling people what my car runs, I wanted some expert input regarding Density Altitude correction and whether the resulting numbers are in fact the legitimate time my car would run in non-crappy weather.

Thanks

18psi said:

So I went to the local drag strip (Sacramento Raceway, basically sea level) this past Wednesday, it was ridiculously hot and humid, with a DA of high 2000's and touching low 3000's throughout the day. Could not get the car to make a clean 1-2 shift, the Lund tune has it set so aggressive that it would just blow the tires off no matter which way I tried, but that's a different discussion. Car is stock with the FF tune, A6 3.55

Anyways,
My best time was a 12.5 @ 113, which the dragtimes calculator is correcting to 12.1 @ 116.

Now before I go telling people what my car runs, I wanted some expert input regarding Density Altitude correction and whether the resulting numbers are in fact the legitimate time my car would run in non-crappy weather.

Thanks

Click to expand...

I would assume yes!

When telling people what you run, tell them what you run. Don't tell them what a website predicts you may run in optimal conditions. If it isn't on the slip, it didn't happen.

just your et and mph is generic answer, if you really want to give a full picture add in your 60ft and 1/8th. The hardcore will be able to recognize soft launches, wheel spin and such.

12.3 at 116 with a 1.8 60ft is one thing
12.3 at 116 with a 2.4 60ft is a whole other animal

What were your 60ft and 1/8th mile times?

Fair points, but please keep in mind this thread/question is specifically about DA correction and how it applies to time slips, not "I wanna bench race and trying to tell people my car is faster than it is". I bench lined the car bone stock in slightly less bad DA, and it ran a 13.1 @ 110. So either way, it gained exactly the power/et/trap that I was expecting.

Anyways, here's the slips
IMG_3490 by vladirsx, on Flickr

As you can see, horrendous launches and '60s due to having to let off basically every time it went into 2nd to not go into the wall

I see you went there on a weds night , its all street cars there that night and they do zero track prep. I used to love to go there weds night when I first started modifying my mustang, but now I cant get down the track on those nights, with no track prep and the dust on the track there from them not sweeping its dangerous. Go to the test and tune, its $50 but way less cars and they prep the track, youll get some good runs those days, sadly weds nights are really for the slower cars, though it is fun there to hang out, youll have a really hard time getting a good timeslip.

bluebeastsrt said:

I went to DragTimes and pulled up a DA of 1651 for your 12.58 run. That's not bad for a spring day in California. I'd assume? Ever consider drag radials? If the track prep is bad. I'll ask the track officials to put a little more vht down. The 1-2 shift happens so fast in my car. it doesn't have time to upset the car. Are you sliding around on the launch or around the60ft mark?

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Last wednesday was particularly bad, I don't know why. It's mid 70's to low 80's this week, and for whatever reason was 94F the day I went.

I looked up weather channel, and at least 2 of those DA calculator websites which use local weather stats for the day to give you "the number" and it was around 2800 when I got there, topped out at 3000, and then tapered down to 2800 on my last run.

I only ran this car at the track twice, once bone stock, and now with tune. I'm no drag racer, or even frequent racer of any kind, I was just curious what the difference would be with tune.

The weirdest thing is that I had no problem with the launch. I mean it is definitely not good compared to what people post up here, but I only spun hard 1 time on the launch, the rest it came out clean no wheel spin or bog and just went. And then BAM! it slams 2nd and I'm sideways. On 1 run it actually got sideways in 3rd, that was particularly scary. Had to come off the throttle on every single run because of this

perfweld said:

I see you went there on a weds night , its all street cars there that night and they do zero track prep. I used to love to go there weds night when I first started modifying my mustang, but now I cant get down the track on those nights, with no track prep and the dust on the track there from them not sweeping its dangerous. Go to the test and tune, its $50 but way less cars and they prep the track, youll get some good runs those days, sadly weds nights are really for the slower cars, though it is fun there to hang out, youll have a really hard time getting a good timeslip.

Click to expand...

Gotcha, thanks for the info. I didn't know they don't do ANY prep on wed's anymore, that's lame. I knew it wasn't great, but didn't know it was this bad.