staging, measuring the roll out

[12port]

I race sand drags and reaction times are very important, I normally light the pre-stage then light the stage and roll in about 6" more, I can get a pretty good reaction time doing this. What I am trying to come up with is a way to measure the distance from when I light the stage light to the 6" area where I would like to be staged, as it is now it is just a guess. Some type of a gauge, counter, bar code counter etc, any help would be great.

[John_Heard]

Are there any rules that apply to this? Do you race at the same track everytime?

[12port]

The only rule we have is that you can not have any electronic device that can read the lights and activate your launch. There are only two tracks that I race at, the main thing I was trying to accomplish is to get staged in the same location each time, thanks for the reply, if you have any ideas please let me know.

[DriveWFO]

Why not just bump your car into the staged beam? That's what I do anyways.

[John_Heard]

Let me think about this a bit. I have a few ideas but not too sure how practical they would be.

[jacobgiles]

wouldnt that fall under a counting device? i dont know about sand drags but to me that would be cheating. i too just bump mine into the beam. you could also just deep stage if your track allows it. to me staging is part of driving, and thats what racing is.

[John_Heard]

On your car since you can see the front tire, how hard would it be to put some marks on the rim, say on the inboard side, about every inch or two. You could visually align it with something like the axle or something and just count how many lines as you go in? Pretty simple to do and try.

[jacobgiles]

thats a good idea, i was under the impression that he was wanting a counter box or some tpye of digital device. you could mount a indicator on the spindle that would ride about 1/2 inch from the wheel to line up the marks on the wheel.(similar to a timing pointer).

[John_Heard]

It helped when he posted his avatar and I saw we were talking about a dragster LOL.

[12port]

I did try something like that with white shoe polish, I put marks every 6" on the inside of the tires and it worked ok except it burned me on one run because while I was watching the mark to come up to where I needed it and looked back up at the tree it was already coming down and I got a really bad light. I was thinking of trying to figure the distance from when I light the pre-stage to where I want to be staged, that may work out better, I am open to any ideas. Thanks