Question for the drag racers

[HoTWire]

Okay so I've been looking at the way drag racing classes are structured, I've got eyes on Quick60 for next year and trying to make a system that is competitive across the board, without ending up with some skewed class structures.

I was looking through how drag racing runs as it often has a diverse range of cars. I see from santapod.co.uk/classes.php that you are put in a class by the time you run (for the most part). Which is a nice way of doing it. My question is this: If I'm in Sportsman ET (12 second or slower) and I run an 11.98 on a competition day, am I now considered to be in Pro ET immediately?

Follow up question, I rock up to the Pod with a new build and I want to enter competition, how do I get classified?

[ferny]

Watching with interest as the long term plan is to do sportsman ET with the Herald. Although I wasn't aware of the 12s rule.

[DarrenW]

For the second part the easiest way is to RWYB it or take it to a test day and see what it'll do before you enter, although certainly for us in the VWDRC we can get a pretty good idea of where a car should be from the specs.

[stealthstylz]

You as a racer decide what class you want to be in then try to run within the allowable time. You could enter a 5 second (at full pelt) Pro Mod into Sportsman ET and run 12.00 or slower if you really wanted to. However the faster classes have a "maximum" time so you can't run a very slow car.

A setup like the kids class at drag and drives might work. They set a ET on the first day then have to try and get as close to it as possible for the rest of the week. The only problem I can see is in theory you could just cruise round the track at a set speed (30mph or whatever) and get very close, which would be boring to watch.

[akku]

If you dial in an index (ie set time) in a time based race and you run quicker than your index you get disqualified not bumped up to the next bracket. This is why you will sometimes see cars braking before the traps at the top of the track, so as not to break out.