Put me down for road, just imagine the things that could go wrong and the regualr wear you get when you run your car hard for hours on end... anyone actually hang out at the circuit at Toronto Motorsports Park or drive on it, just see and listen to the crazy #@$@ that happens to many of these cars and the wear they take.

don't just think about the drivetrain when comparing...

on a road course, the suspension and everything around it takes a beating... the brakes, tires, bearings, bushings... all wear more then if u do a straight line drag.

drag is harder on u'r har when it comes to the drivetrain IMO... but overall road course is what will kill that car over time.

I know this with my own cars... not even driving on a course, but if u'r constantly driving the hard, you can tell the suspension and other components just isn't ment to take it (OEM).

ya.. supra DT made a good comment on Fluids and other parts that take huge beatins after constant Road use... think of this.. take your car to the Drag strip.. do a run.. listen to the car after your outside.. and its noises..

now go around a race track.. get out.. and your car will be squelling

Drag racing is much more abusive to your car than road racing.

The duration of road racing is not really all that stressful as long as you are withing your cars thermal limits (don't overheat stuff). Smooth is fast, and a lot of the time you are nowhere near the mechanical limits of your car while racing. If you are a poor driver you are much harder on your car than a good one. A good driver is always minimizing the forces acting on a car which reduces the stress on the car.

Wear item do wear faster because of the much higher forces they endure than the average driver, but breakage is very rare. Brakes and tires wear fast! But nothing else on the car really does.

Drag racing is very abusing because of its very nature. You are at max power from a standing start again and again trying for maximum accelleration. That means you are applying the maximum force your engine can make to your car every time you race to have the maximum rate of accelleration. The forces are much higher. Especially on launch compared to a road race car.

To make it much more simple - we have a couple Type R's set up for road racing at my shop. They still have the factory stock axles, transmission, and engines in them. How many civics with the less powerful GSR swap are blowing shafts at the drag strip?

you put a good point.. but for road races you change other things than Axel's

Drag you have to change it because all the stress is push onto that point

if you used the same car, drove one down a drag strip and one down a road obviously the road course would put more stress on the car, as a single lap is at least a minute where drag races last no longer than 13seconds (if you are breaking cars over 13 seconds theres a problem), before you can let the car sit and cool.

If there is a standing start on a road course then its totally even isn't it :)

Its mostly about maximum stress and shock loading.

There is a obviously stress in road racing, but the maximum level of stress is much lower since there is little shock loading.

You have to have a basic grasp of metalurgy. All ferrous metals have a elastic limit and a yield point. Ferrous metals are pretty resistant to work hardening (a type of fatigue) also - so we will just leave that out to simplify.

Basically - ferrous (iron or steel) parts will all act like a spring with no loss in strength as long as your keep the total forces acting on the part under the elastic limit. The part my deform or flex, but will return to its original form as long as the forces don't exceed the yield point. There is very very little work hardening.

The yield point is where you overcome the elastic limit of the part and if perminantly deforms. This fatigues the metal and is the first step towards failure.

So, if you have a relatively high level of force (compared to every day drving), but never exceed the yeild point of the part - it will not be damaged.

In drag racing, you have an extremely high level of force for a short period of time. The problem is that you are going into forces that exceed the yield point of the parts. Gears, axles, CV or U-joints, engine parts - are deforming perminantly. Just a little, but its the beginning of the part failing.

Lubrication and temp also plays a huge part, but I am only focusing on parts wear due to stress compared to a lubrication or cooling failure. But for lubrication its simple - as soon as you exceed the pressure limit for the lubricant film, you are running metal to metal with the associated mechanical wear. Temp is much more complicated and I won't get into that.

Considering the forces are much much higher in drag racing, which one do you think has a greater chance of of wiping out the lubricating film?

Its hard to compare the two since its like comparing a sprinter vs. a marathon runner.

its all depends on the car as we said before..


laernt somthing new about ferrous today ;)

exactly.. i mean, unless you just do it for fun, its hard on your car no matter what, but if you race course, then you know how to tune your car for that type of racing.. and same with drag.. tune it properly for that type of racing.. all about the car.. the tires.. the suspension, the way you drive it.. and so on.. what gear you have it in at a certain rpm

ok.. if i took my car on a road course and took each turn hard... my tie rods, control arms and everything would just snap..

but when i go to the track, my car is fine after 10 runs.. if theres time

If you drive properly, you won't hurt anything on a road course. You do wear out brakes and tires faster though.

I have broken a lot more at TMP's dragstrip and St. Thomas than I have at Mosport, Shannonville, TMP's road course, and Dunnville. And the cars spend a lot more time road racing than drag racing.

what kinda car do you drive racer rick ?

Great post, but unless you are 'taking it easy' on the road coarse, I would say its more like Sprinter vs Sprinter running a marathon.

I would say that most cars on here that drag race are under the axle-twisting, output shaft-shearing catastrophic failure level, so there is little to no damage to parts that that arent wear items anyway (clutch, tires). Running at near redline levels for 30 minutes would wear a car much more in my opinion. maximum suspension travels, maximum breaking limit, WOT for most of the 30 minutes. That seems much worse than one clutch dump and WOT for 13 seconds.

I run an old craptactualr Camaro in Solo 1.

I have also run an old Barracuda and a Mazda 323 at open track events. I have run about a half dozen different cars at the drags.

Other than wearing out tires and brake pads, I have never had a failure on a road race course. Unless you count boiling the Willwood brake fluid.

On the drag strip I have scattered engines and transmissions, blown the spider gears right out of rear ends, twisted axles and unibodies, torn engine mounts right in half, blown tires, bent springs, torn off the rear bumper, and set a car on fire (just a little fire), broken flexplates, ballooned converters, tossed driveshafts, mangled U-joints, and probaly more.

At the race days, there is usually no breakdowns (if you don't count the same one guy who can't keep his 240SX running) and people are usually running for 2 or 3 hours during the day, counting competition, practice, and lapping.

When I go to the dragstrip for test and tune, there is usually two or three cars that break and make them clean up the track.

Anyways, you are rarely running at the redline while road racing. Most of time you are somewhere in the midrange. Most cars torque peaks are well below the redline, and that is where you want to be coming out of corner. Gives you maximum accelleration before having to shift just past the horsepower peak.

it doesnt matter you'd go beyond the point of elasticity if you were using that same vehicle on the initial launch at the beggining of the race.

My point was simple, racing involves a drag race at the beggining, and then theres a WHOLE bunch of other stuff afterwards.