The Driver Matters

My name is Daniel and this is my first blog I've created. This is about what I've learned about racing, and the car I race with. before i raced i knew nothing about cars but as i started racing i wanted to know more and more about cars and how they work and how to make them better and I've learned the restricting areas on these cars to its top performance and what good advantages i have on them my first car and the one i have today a 2003 mustang GT. I bought it when I was 14 years old at an action. Not thinking id ever race one day I bought this car because I always loved mustangs. As i grew more mature i wanted to know more about cars and it grew in my interests.  till one day i found out about racing and well   didn't do so good in my first season at the track.       If you Watch top Gear it is clear that The Stig is the
First off i couldn't shift right or at the right places.    Best driver on the show. When racing in a slower
 Second off i didn't understand about i need             against a faster car he still wins. This is a great
 traction at take off. Of course i didn't under-           example of the "Good Driver Mod"
stand i need a fast reaction time to win. but that
 offseason i did a lot i worked and learned what i needed to do. I learned the good driver mod. No car can go its full potential without a good driver so i learned a good technic of shifting which is called power shifting. i learned that not letting go of the gas and pushing the clutch and slamming it in gear as fast as i can made the car faster by many tenths. This wasn't an easy one, i had to practice a lot to get this down and i became quiet fast my friend said "ha ha you shift faster than anybody else I've seen". I seemed to get this down after about half a year of practicing on the off season of racing. Most times I'd miss the gear and grind the synchros in the transmission but never anymore. But this could give me and advantage of shifting faster less time off the gas and more on it. And less time spent shifting off the gas instead foot left on the gas shifting faster. Especially faster than granny shifting which is letting off the gas and pressing the clutch then change gears. This takes so much time and its wasting time that could be spent up in the higher rpms where the most horsepower is at. This is another advantage of speed shifting. Speed shifting helps the rpms to stay up high where the peak of horsepower is at in a car. See, when you speed shift you stay on the gas and when you go out of that gear and slam it in the next as fast as you can you should only over rev only at tops of 250 rpms sometimes you shouldn't even notice it over rev this is good because that shows how fast you are shifting. Now you may think thats impossible but its not it only requires quickness and this will help your car be faster by many tenth of a second in a quarter mile. Most aftermarket short throw shifters can help you shift faster due to a shorter way to travel to get it in the next gear. Drag race cars shifters are all different one i saw had 4 levers he said first gear i pull this one back 2nd gear he'd pull the next lever back and third he'd pull the next lever back this can help shifting faster mostly probably because of the force of the car pulling you back you probably couldn't reach an put it in 3rd gear like a street car. Most people get aftermarket clutches to get easier grip from one gear to the next instead of grinding the synchros also because though they reached the max horsepower the clutch could handle and it would just get burnt out so they install better stronger clutched that are stiffer. My thought on automatics street cars lose that advantage of losses, 20-15% of the horsepower through the drivetrain. Manuals only lose about 10-15%. And that is a good advantage so if you want to drag race with a car a manual will make you go much faster than an automatic. As you learn to power shift you may wear down the synchros in the process of learn and also power shifting accelerates the wearing down process so you may need to do transmission rebuild like i have done this consists of replacing clutch, replace synchros for every gear, replace shift fork pad, sometimes you'll bend a shift for and need a new one of those, and if you get the bearings off without breaking them then you won't have to buy new bearings. i did synchros, and new clutch, new shift fork pad, also my shift for pin that held the fork in place fell off inside the transmission and we had to find it and put the pin back into place.