Question Please

[Michael Beard]

Originally Posted by R Brown

and use a stripe taker. ?????????????????
????????What's this?

In bracket racing, it it legal to have a stripe taker, a fixed piece of metal located under the nose of the car that trips the finish line beam. Some cars naturally trip the finish line with the nose, spoiler, front fascia, air dam, spill plate, etc., while others trip the finish line with the front tire. In the case of my Turismo, the nose is pretty low, but it passes over the finish line, except when I lift or hit the brakes, then the front end drops low enough to trip the beam early: if I hit the brakes right at the stripe, I'll go a couple hundredths *quicker*, because I hit the finish line with the nose instead of the tire. The front end is so low on the car that my stripe take is only about 1-1/2" tall... that's all it takes to trip the finish line consistently. When Class racing, I remove the stripe taker and have to change my finish line driving style (and have to go back to shallow staging and change my starting line driving style.)

Study those Super Stock Cobalts, and late model Camaros in Stock, and see what's hitting the finish line, the nose or the tire? And is that answer the same if the driver hits the brakes? Just stuff to be aware of.