The Cal-look Lounge

I am new to the VW dragrace-scene, even thou I have been involved with aircooled Volkswagen's most of my life.
The last two years, I have been collecting parts and information to make my first street/strip beetle. In this period I have been talking to several persons in the traditional Scandinavian dragrace-scene.
It seems that they think that vw-racers in general spend much more time in the depot between each lap, than for example the V8 -people.
What is your opinion about this statement?
Is it because our engines needs more time to chill down, or are there other reasons.

Maybe because alot of us do not have an onboard cooling or charging system to save weight. Between rounds I cool my engine with a fan and recharge my battery fully. Some passes it gives me time to change my underware, Mike McCarthy

Been there done that!

It is also due to the fact that the VW are faster and a lot more high tech. We need to check our data logs, adjust the suspension, increase the turbo boost etc  ;)

BB

+1
Its just envy from the V8 crowd arising after they got beat by a little volkswagen  :D

I'm sure there's plenty of V8 guys doing that, too.

Fact is air-cooled engines run a hell of a lot hotter than water pumpers, that's one big factor.  On gas, I should specify.  Remove a charging system and voila, you're making extended pit trips for charging and cooling purposes.

we can't help to outrun all the other and be the ones who are first back in the pits... nothing inefficient, you can get used to the feeling.

Well, the organizers at the Aircooled races Bug Run Classic (Tierp Arena, Sweden) and partly at SCC (Gardermoen Norway) have experienced that cars don't come up to the lineup.
When we run around the pits to talk to the teams they often say that they need more time for the engine to cool down after their previous run.

When we talk to the organizers that also work at the bigger races, they don't seem to understand why the aircooled cars don't come forward when the lineup is empty and everyobody is waiting and ready for more racing.
They make jokes about the aircooled guys being lazy and sleepy.
And still the aircooled guys always talk about how much they want to get as many runs as possible at each race...

Why is this?

At bug run classic last year we did 9 passes in the one day,how many do you expect us to do? that was a little hectic for me,there are a few between rounds things I like and some I need to do,i figure 45mins at least needed from getting back to the pits to being ready again

What you need is more cars to fill the gaps,not the same cars going round and round ;)

cheers richie

Nine passes sounds good to me, especially for a relatively extreme car like yours  :)

I'm no expert mechanic, far from it!

But it seems to me that many teams need more time between runs than you, even if they only need to do small adjustments.
I guess your team is relatively experienced compared to many others, meaning that they need for more time to get things right between runs.

We all want more cars  :)

Kid A,

Lazy or not, 4-5 runs during one day is more than enough for me. I will then have the info I need and at the same time have enough time to cool the engine AND the driver in between the runs. This is also the exact reason why I prefer races where we have 2 or 3 days of racing. That said, if I have managed to qualify I would speed things up a bit. A good example is the few street legal races we have here and when we just have time enough to get the car back into the staging lines in between the runs.

I have been to races where some VW's managed 24 1/4 mile runs during 1 day.

BB

Attending events like Bug Run and SCC gives the driver the opportunity to run "as much as he likes", and that is part of the concept of the events. But if you attend a regular drag race competition, you can not tell the organizers that you have to wait for the engine to cool down when it`s your turn in the ladder. This is a actual problem for the air cooled drag racer (and one of the reasons I put a wbx into my drag car).
So I think, if you want to do regular drag race competitions, you have to figure out a way to keep the engine cool, one way or the other...

 It really is NOT that complicated , put the cooling system back on the car. Unlimited Street cars have theirs , hell Troy Sellers beats my Pro Outlaw car with his USE car and I am running 6.45 in the 1/8th !  I can "hot lap" with my race car and have but prefer not to. If I overheated my engine and did damage to it I could not replace the parts for what I could win. Most event promoters I have dealt with have understood about our cool down time and worked with us . If I have 15 minutes I can have my engine cooled down and battery fully charged .

It's not me that says you are lazy, it's the organizers that are used to regular dragracing.
It's the guys in black, making bittersweet jokes at SCC and BRC 8)


Thank you all for making me a little bit wiser  :)