Bracket racing has been called “The Game of Mistakes”. The driver that makes the least number of mistakes wins. If you have miscalculated your dial-in and your oppenent hasn’t, you’ve already lost. A bad leave will trailer you. A slight delay in your reaction time, as little as .001 second, can lose a race. You will be constantly faced with critical decisions and if you make a wrong one at the wrong time, you will lose, simple as that, no second chances. There is often little time to ponder what your decision will be and the pressure to make the right one is intense. And, the pure intensity of the starting line makes concentration difficult.
You back into the water box, and move forward slightly out of the water. You stab the line-lock that sets and locks the front brakes and releases the back brakes. This allows the slicks to spin violently, creating heat from friction and causes oils in the slicks to come to the surface, making them tacky. Line-lock set, you press the accelerator pedal and engine rpm begins to mount as the slicks begin spinning. The open exhaust becomes a roar, your car begins bouncing slightly, and a slight haze of tire smoke builds from your spinning slicks. Your competitior does the same.
The sound of the burnout, the smell of hot oil, mixed with the acrid smell of tire smoke, and the strangly sweet smell of racing gas fumes overloads the senses. Spectators and crewmen near the starting line, lean away from the ever increasing noise, wincing, with fingers in their ears. Your opponent, rear tires spinning, engine roaring, front wheels locked becomes engulfed in a immense cloud of tire smoke that drifts over the starting line. The front brakes are locked, front wheels unmoving, yet the violently spinning slicks pushes the car forward. The front tires dig into the track, trying to hold back the power, but they skid forward, overcome by the mounting horsepower. The car violently leaves the waterbox as the front brakes are released. It springs forward like an uncaged animal and leaps toward the starting line, literally shaking like an excited racehorse. Waves of engine heat and tire smoke swirl around the starting line like a dragons breath.
You have trouble imagining how the fragile human being inside your opponents car can control all the raw power that will soon be released. The driver, tied down by a spider web of straps is dehumanized by the crash helmet and the darkened crash helmet visor. Without a face, the driver seems like an android; robotic, stiff and inhuman, part of a powerful machine, merged into it. Deep down, this is truly frightening at some instinctual level and that squeezes the adrenal gland.
You both move toward the starting line to stage. You check temperature, oil pressure, look at the E.T. posted on the electronic clock at the end of the quarter mile to insure that the tower has entered it correctly. Your opponent stages. You stage carefully, bumping the car from the prestage into the staged light beams, placing the car exactly on the starting line. The blue light on top the tree glows, telling you this is an elimination round. You bring your engine rpm up. Your opponents engine revolutions begin building and it starts roaring loudly like a primeval beast. He gets against his three-step, a device that limits rpm buy allowing cylinders to misfire randomly. The noise increases. Intensity is present on the attitudes of crewmembers and spectators alike. They lean forward to watch the all important launch. The starter hits the switch, and the yellow lights start down on your side of the tree, startling bright in the darkness, spaced at .5 second intervals. Flash, Flash,Flash-NOW! You dump the brake and floor the accelerator the instant you see the last yellow flash. You’ve got both your car’s rollout time figured and your reaction time factored into the launch sequence. You never see the green light come on.
You seem to get a good light and blast down the track, leaving your opponent staged at the line, waiting for the tree to come down on his side. You can see him clearly in your rear view mirror, outlined in the bright lights that glare down on the starting line at night. You keep pulling away. You make your shift point and take another quick glance at the mirror. You see the lights coming down on his side of the tree and JEEZ, he leaves like a rocket! The car just disappears out of the lights at the starting line into the murkiness that is the rest of the track. Night racing can be a bitch. You can barely make out a shape hurling toward you in the darkness and God, is he coming fast! It’s hard to judge his distance in the darkness because he has no headlights; he’s running blacked out-perfectly legal and part of his strategy – you can’t see me, but I can see you. You have your tail lights on, because it’s required by the rules so it’s going to be hide and seek at 100+ mph. You hit your final shift point into high and try to press the throttle pedal through the floor. It’s developing into a top end duel with the finish coming up fast.
You are 100 yards from the stripe, the distance of a football field with your opponent heading into your blind spot. This is the big moment for both of you. Your opponent may judge that he can’t pass you. If so, he’ll sit in your blind spot, tap his brakes and slow slightly insuring that he will be over his dial-in. Since you can’t see him, you will keep your foot in it and go quicker then your dial-in. That’s a break-out, an automatic lose! Is he setting you up to be the victim of the classic bracket racing tactic known as “the dump?” Or maybe you should hit the brakes and try to dump him. Let him go flying past you full throttle wondering where in hell you went. Problem is, which one of you got the better leave and who is running closer to their dial-in? You could be giving the race away by dropping anchor when you shouldn’t be. Or, perhaps you are both on a double break-out run. In that case, the winner is whoever breaks out the least, no matter what else happens. Or, it could be that…
The football field seems like a lot of distance but at a speed of 100 miles per hour, you will be there in two seconds. Your faster opponent will cover this distance in even less time! You have less then two seconds to look around, determine where your opponent is, judge if he will pass you, and how you are going to react. Buddy, this is decision making under pressure! Even professional football quarterbacks have more time to make a decision. Even over the roar of your open exhausts, you can hear him coming up, like the proverbial bat out of hell…
