Bracket Racing Inside in St. Louis
2/14/2007
Baby, it’s cold outside. But that isn’t stopping them from drag racing in St. Peters, MO, at Midcoast Performance’s new Indoor Drag Racing League. Organized by Gene Borton, the League is approaching the midpoint of its inaugural 15 week season, and looks to be a surprise success.
Wait a second. Indoor drag racing? How does that even work? Good question. It all starts with a Mustang Load Cell Dynamometer. You put your car up on the dyno, tie it down at the corners with ratchet straps, then run it for a quarter mile. Fastest car wins, right? Well, it’s not quite that simple, because the dyno they use is a very advanced model. Equipped with an electromagnet on the axel of the dyno, it can be programmed with factory data on the curb weight of the car in question, parasitic loss from tire/pavement friction, even wind resistance.
All of these factors are combined to come up with the right amount of resistance for the magnet to generate on the dyno, all of which, when combined with special software to measure speeds at designated distance marks, goes to make the dyno an accurate test 
of real world speed and power, rather then the mostly theoretical results of traditional dynamometers.
Of course, it takes more than results to make a League, but Horton’s on top of that. Entering the races costs $20 a night. What does twenty bucks get you? In this case, it’ll buy you five runs. Two practice, and three scored runs on the dyno. Runs are scored on the reaction time, as well as the 60, 1,000, and quarter-mile times, and drivers are given points based on these scores. If you red light (on the real Christmas tree), you’re penalized points. Simple as that. The fastest reaction time of the night earns a point's bonus, as well as a cash prize. At the end of the fifteen-week season, drivers will be
allowed to drop three nights of their choice. Then, the top four racers will compete in a tournament for the championship.
Sounds good, but how does something like this get started? It seems that about a year ago, Gene and his shop bought the dynamometer in question, expecting to be using it for nothing more than tuning the race cars they build. Word got around, however, that there was a very nice dyno in the area, and soon racers began showing up to test their cars on it. Enough people were showing up that the idea to formalize the inevitable competition came up.
