TAD Parity?

Really????????

Dean

 

Seriously Will, show me how you think they needed anything

As an outsider and guy not running either combo so I don't have a vested interest, the rule change really does not add up.
When it was announced it was announced after a season where seven BAD and nine A/Fuelers had run in the 5.20's
here is my comment when the change was announced.
" I know they have data but I am sure there were 7 or 8 blown cars that ran in the 20's

Whiteley, Demke, Severance, Booher (or was a 30 his best), Martin, Cowie, Perry, Taliaffero

A/fuel cars in the 20's, nine at least (I did not look through all the div regional events so likely there were more)

Reichert, Shields, Ahten, Page, Bateman, Meyer, Kanick, Bradshaw and Gingles.


I also posted in that same thread when the change was announced "I wonder what the potential is for 2014".

So far we know a solid teen is likely.


The quickest two runs were 5.219 for BAD and 5.228 for A/Fueler in 2013. Less than a hundredth between them. Five of each type in the top ten, yes the top four were BAD's, but that is more based on the events competed at than domination by BAD's. 12 in the top 20 were A/Fuelers and 8 were BADs.

There was one dominant racers though and that was Whiteley. He was the only driver to win more than four events (he won 8 including four nationals). One other BAD driver won more than two races and that was Brandon Booher, he won 4 races one of which was a national). Only one A/Fueler won more than 2 races and that was Reichert who won 3.
Here is a real interesting fact, there were 16 national events, BAD's won 8 and A/Fuelers won 8. (parity?). There were 25 regional events. 12 were won by BAD's and 13 were won by A/Fuelers (parity?). So in short there were a couple more A/Fuelers who ran in the 5.20's that the BAD's in 2013, the quickest ets were close, the wins are an absolute wash. Yes one driver did dominate but in every year the champion does seem to have a better score than the rest hence they are the champion.

So far in 2014, there have been two BAD's in the 20's, Severance and Demke (both did last year as well). There have been four A/Fuelers in the 5.20's, Ahten, Shields, McKernan and St. Arnaud. (two have never been before), one of the new 5.20 drivers has already made four or five runs in the 5.20's in only two races.
The NHRA made a mistake by giving the A/Fuelers percentage and both chilling the fuel.
If someone who posts or reads these posts can give me a logical reason why they made the rule change (or tell me why they did not think the rules were fair last year, or where there was not parity), please come on board.


Dean Murdoch
www.speedzonemagazine.com

 

Like I said in another thread wait till its over 85 degrees and have this conversation please. Its a moot point having it now. Blown alcohol cars were the better running cars for YEARS over 85 degrees ambient air temp. And that's when the majority of the races are run. I used to joke with other a/fuel car owners its a spring and fall racing season for A/FD's. Funny did you see the a/fuel guys whining in here about Booher's perceived advantage?


Now maybe it evens out...lets see!

 

Grow up

Stop whining did you forget Whitely ran 5.17 at Pomona or that doesn't count because he runs TAD
You weren't there to see know whole story or realize what was going on. it's like being a back seat driver. It takes more than 1% and cold fuel to run in the teens everything else has to be there too.

 

Will you cannot insulate the tank so its subject to the heat stored in asphalt you parked over in the staging lanes at 140 degrees F and sit there for 45 minutes. A cover don't fix that issue.

some things never change.....its 20 years later and alcohol cars still have to have their way or the world is wrong. When nitro cars were the ducks back in the day in elims the world was great. If NHRA had there head out of their arse they would let you guys run anything u want with blowers and weight and cubic inch and let us do the same on 100% and let the best man win.

That is what racing should be but then the Pros would be whining were knocking on their door.

 

This is exactly what Pat said when I asked the question about insulating the tank Jan 27 email..........



I had heard thru the grapevine there might be some consideration in the works to allow insulating the fuel tank. Is there any validity to that rumor?



Dave,

I am not aware of that.



Pat Cvengros

Pacific Division Technical Director

(626) 250-2295



UPDATE:


THATS too funny I found it myself now in the rule amendments...I stand corrected. That makes me happy I know that now. My tank is out of the car. Glad Pat the div tech director knew....NOT!

 

parity

I firmly believe that the afuel cars needed help last yr to keep up with the blown cars. If you do the stats from every qualifying and elimination run using the top 2 cars of each then you will find that the afuel cars were behind. Using that method will also give you an idea of the weather at the time of each run . And those numbers will give you an average of .06 to .08 behind.

if you were to look at the summer races it is really obvious as to how far the afuel cars could go in rounds without running into a blown car that was faster and yes there should be races that the blown cars have an advantage and there should be a time that the afuel cars should. But everywhere that Whitley went he pretty much set the bar and Demke was right there with him( and they have both worked hard on there cars to get them there, as have most if not all the afuel guys have) but if Demke or Whitley were there then you were just hoping to get to the final 4 or they slip up (examples are (good air race Whitley at charlotte 1 low 5.21 and fastest afuel was Meyer 5.25 I believe) (bad air race Indy either Demke or Whitley ran a 5.31 and Oliveraz ran a 5.38 and the top 4 qualifiers were blown)


As for the wins that everyone tries to use, there were only 2 races that the afuel car in the finals should have won or it could have went either way. That was Gainesville,(McPhillips) and Brainerd(Gingles). That is not to take away from the other afuel wins but they were in the right place at the right time (us included), because if you go back and look at the numbers ran by the winner they were not truly fast enough that they should have won or they were behind and the other car screwed up.

Also Dean you keep saying look at your stats but I think that you should look at your stats as there is at least 1 person on there that you keep saying ran 20s last year and they did not. I only know because they are good friends of mine and I asked 1 of them and they said no they did not.

so in closing please let this go until there r some hot weather races before you pass judgment

Thanks for the time and space

Tony Samsel

 

Observations

I would like to make a couple of additions to this friendly discussion.
First, You can't count all qualifying runs into your stats, because you only count 1 per eevent, so the quickest of each car is the only one that you can buy stock in. The others can be "swing for the fence, and didn't make it" or "not going to be fast, so I clicked it", or a dozen other reasons. Point is I always thought we should use the average of 2 out of 3 runs. That allows you to have 1 mistake, but doesn't allow a Mr. one hit wonder to run 10.63, 8.91, and 5.37 to and bump out hard working Mr. 5.44, 5.41, 5.39. Odds are the latter of these two teams will put on a better race (and show for the fans) in eliminations.

Second, I laugh at the Team Whitely comments. If that quality same group with the same budget and resources ran AF/D for the same period of time, I would bett my meager savings plan that they would have won a championship or two, and been a dominating force.

The SRAC didn't hear about these rules changes until post fact (which is another problem), but when we were allowed to share our opinions, BA/D and AF/D representatives alike agreed that these changes were too much. When you get your tune-up as close as it's been the last 2 years (best I've seen in my 27 years in the class), you don't go changing 3 things at once. For the record, the SRAC alcohol committe reccomended that they rescinded 2 of the 3 changes and enaacted the insulated fuel line to start. If that didn't help the consistency to the fuel contingent enough, a second helper would be added later.

Looking forward to seeing you aall this season,
Marty Thacker

 

Good to see the conversations going. Tony you are correct, but in my defense who would have thought that Duane Shields would not have at least one run in the 5.20's in the entire year, I must have just assumed without looking through all the data. I apologize for that. But I will go into a bit more detail overall with this post.

What I did was to take all 16 nationals events and take the top 10 ets from each type of combo and average them (yes it took a long time to do this). Now there were a couple races where I did not take the top ten due to there being not very good runs from either combo after the top five or six. and believe me there were some weak runs outside the top five - seven at a few races,

These stats I am doing are not to show a favoritism at all from my side, I am a journalist and I have always looked at both sides and I feel in most cases over the last decade and a half I have shown a non bias. And that being said when the rules were announced I thought the A/Fuel cars were given way to much. If the rules were not for the entire year and just for when the weather was hot and humid I would have very little issue with them. But when it benefits a certain combo in the hot weather you have to be blind that it does not also help them in the cooler weather, and in fact it may help them more in that type of weather.

Another thing that almost can't be discounted but maybe should be is to take the top two or three runners (maybe even only the top team in each class and throw out their results, because they do tend to be the most noticeable and do tend to make that combo's stats look stronger. But I did not do that for the data. ( if did do it for my own curiosity and you would be surprised by those results)

So from 2013 here are the averages from approx. the top 10 runs from each combo at each Nat'l event and in the BADs stats I posted the difference in advantage or disadvantage for that combo. The ets beside the race is the average et for that combo for that race for the top 10 (approx.) runs

BADs
Pomona 1 BAD 5.291 +.081 adv Seattle 5.30775 + .048 adv
Gainesville BAD 5.3544 -.043 disadv Brainerd 5.3068 + .016 adv
Vegas 1 BAD 5.340 + .06 adv Indy 5.3498 + .059 adv
Charlotte1 5.3033 +.001 adv Charlotte 2 5.3581 + .0105 adv
Houston 5.3514 +.049 adv Dallas 5.3013 +.033 adv
Topeka 5.4058 +.009 adv Reading 5.3845 -.0042 disadv
Chicago 5.3336 -.011 disadv Vegas 5.3206 +.057 adv
Norwalk 5.3888 + .018 adv Pomona 5.2558 +.0831 adv

A/Fuel
Pomona 1 A/F 5.3723 Seattle 5.3555
Gainesville A/F 5.3117 Brainerd 5.3203
Vegas 1 A/F 5.40 Indy 5.4091
Charlotte 1 5.3046 Charlotte 2 5.3695
Houston 5.4001 Dallas 5.3342
Topeka 5.414 Reading 5.3803
Chicago 5.3221 Vegas 5.3776
Norwalk 5.4066 Pomona 5.3389


In 2013 if you combine all the events the average difference is .0292 per race in favor of the BADs.
In three races the A/fuelers had the advantage, only two of them over a hundredth and only one was in the half a tenth range (Gainesville). At three races where BADs were quicker the difference was than 1/100th or less of a second and in ten races the BADs had an advantage of greater than .01. In those ten races there was less than .019 difference in two races and in five others the difference was .049 or less. Two races saw a difference of .057 and .059 and the two big disparities were at Pomona (not a hot bed for A/Fuelers) of .081 and .083 each.

After the Winters this year

Here are the stats for the two combos
A/Fuel last year average was 5.3723
5.284, 5.291, 5.347, 5.278, 5.321, 5.291,5.336, 5.299, 5.260, 5.328 = 5.3035
BAD last year average was 5.2910
5.277, 5.346, 5.218, 5.345, 5.346, 5.220, 5.230, 5.276, 5.251, 5.399 = 5.2908

The BAD's were basically the same (2/1000ths quicker, but the A/Fuel cars were almost .07 quicker at only one race. Two hew drivers became 5.20 competitors and Duane Shields got back into the 5.20's (5.260). Last year no A/Fueler ran in the 5.20's and this year four or five did.
Now some might say that ya the blower guys did not have Whiteley running this year so their numbers would be way lower if he did. Now that is true, but that cannot be taken into account because I made the decision to use competitors in attendance not the potential of guys not there.

Jim Whitely did drop the BADs number down last year by around four hundredths per race he attended. The top two drivers in BAD combined (Demke the other driver) swung the data by an absolute huge amount as in the top ten runs per race on average their runs had 6-9 runs out of the ten best.
If you take out the top two A/Fuel drivers the average et only changed by just over 1/100ths per race. The time it would have taken me to decide on the top two A/Fuel drivers was not worth it as many were on equal footing.


If you don't think that scenario does not matter fine, but those two drivers skewed the stats so strong that it almost makes the stats non usable.

Even this year at the winters, it makes that statement the truth. In essence we are penalizing the rest of the BAD teams because of what happened with two drivers. and their teams awesome abilities to manage a race track.

Demke had five of the ten runs from Pomona and all five were quicker than any of the other five runs in the study.


So where do we go from here. I don't know but I hope the weather is cool (for Gainesville) and the top East coast teams show up there to see how much of a help the extra % and insulation give them. Last year they had a .04 et advantage. With pretty decent conditions (in qualifying air was around 1000 feet)

I will say this, after looking at all the races I was a bit surprised that the BAD's had an noticeable advantage at 8 races (over .019) and A/Fuel only had a big advantage at one race. The two Texas races are the most noticeable in BAD domination in my opinion as the q leaders were BAD's But in both races the BADs travelled way out of their way to compete and at Dallas the five best BADs in the country competed so the numbers get skewed. At Houston the A/Fuelers did not have a chance with the overall number either even though only two BADs showed up, unfortunately they are the two BADs that are like the US taking on my country in a war: cool:

The only thing I can say about the rule change was the optics do look a bit strange especially since we rarely heard anything in public about the parity issue over the last couple years.


For all the teams out there don't be afraid of posting here, as the debate still makes this class one of the coolest out there, and I would never want to see it split.
The difference between the two cars is what makes the class so exciting.

Dean


www.speedzonemagazine.com

 

Get your reality in gear.

I believe a certain racers proximity to Glen Gray's house had the largest impact on the rule change. Their idea is that their car, dated as it is, should be able to run with a top of the line blown car.

 

I have heard this post before and it's getting old. And how is this new rule helping that said team? LOL

 

We're a few more races in, Charlotte having temps in the 80's, sure seems the a-fuel combination has a decided advantage over the blown cars. Reichert went 5.26 and had wet pipes at 1000', how hot does it need to be for common sense to be used? From what I'm told there was no NHRA officials checking fuel temp in the staging lanes in qualifying or eliminations.

Steve Lapenstark

 

Hmmm....Sure Steve...LOL

Winternationals winner Chris Demke
Gators winner Duane Shields
Vegas Nationals winner Joey Severance
4 wide winner Corey Michalek

Vegas was your best look into what its going to be like this summer, over 4000 feet corrected altitude. Severance dominated there.

Severance can beat 99% of the a/fuel cars any day of the week. And is ant this about who can win races not who can pull a rabbit out of their hat every now and then? Or should we just hand Severance the No 1 for his car now and quibble about the rest of the cars?

The results seem to be Overwhelmingly dominated by a/fuel we better get right on changing those rules!!!!!!!

Some people wouldn't know parody if it was staring them in the face.

 

Dominated?....really???

http://www.dragracecentral.com/DRCStory.asp?ID=282961&Filter=Year2014#indextop

So in 4000' of air they run nearly identical and anything under that the a/fuel combo has a .05 - .1s advantage.

Steve Lapenstark

 

Wouldn't you call winning the regional there the week before and the national a week later dominant? In my world that means he won 7 rounds of racing in a row. I guess we wouldn't call that dominant?

I guess for you hes not dominant till he runs the table?

I guess for you 90% of the races are run at under 3500 ft corrected not over 3500ft corrected or more like the rest of us.

Im done talking to a fool. The same haters for the last 30 years.