can you call someone who is racing an automatic car a bad driver?! Last time i checked, all thats required to go fast is pushing your right foot down all the way and holding the steering wheel straight.

Like last night. I was at a meet in mexico when this guy in alid,catbackand stalled A4 z28 (1998)raced a stock M6 trans am (2000) and the T/A won every time.The meetguys were shouting ' aww nah man its cause the guy with the auto cant/didnt race it right' and some crap about not flooring it all the way or something like that.

I see this all over car forums too. "oh the guy with the (insert car WITH automatic transmission) lost cause he was a bad driver". Am i missing something here? You can take cars with the exact same 1/4 time, HP, Tq, power to weight ratio, gearing, WHATEVER to make them exactly equal, one being auto and the other m6, and all the automatic guy has to do is floor the gas pedal from a roll or slowly go into it from a stop to not spin and there u go! You could race in an auto and be drinking out of a damn sippy cup and still have ZERO errors. So whats is mean when an automatic cars driver ' cant drive'.

Also, I am NOT talkingabout the drivetrain loss of an auto nor am i debating which is better for racing auto vs. stick. I just simply want to know why some people think an auto car looses cause the driver sucked, wtf!? Mechanical error? Ok fine. Less hp or the other car is simply fast? Yes ill take that too. You lost in your auto cause you couldnt drive? Explain.

 

have you ever driven a high stall auto car with some power?

two of our faster LS1 owners here both swapped from a manual to an auto, and ran better times, if im not mistaken.

 

+1

 

My old stalled/built auto would put the smack down on a manual car with similar rwhp numbers...it just hooked and went..but it STILL took skill to get it off the line. YES DRIVING AN AUTO TAKES SKILL.

It still eerks me when some Manual elistist believes an auto just requires mashing the gas and holding on. From a stop it requires knowing where to launch from and how to launch (Mine used to take a lot of feathering as I could never keep the tires from spinning once I was moving)...
From a roll you have to know your downshift points and bad spots (manual valvebody pretty much eliminated that issue for me).

 

i run a manually shifted, stalled auto in my white car, and in my 71 demon...the white car ran 12.30s-12.40s...with a 3500 stall, shifting around 6500....if i launched too low, it wouldnt come out as hard (obviously)...if i tried to launch too hard, the car would creep at the line, and i would have to back out of it..plus, you still have to time your shifts to get the best times...with a stick shift car, you can feather the clutch...with an auto, there is no feathering or slipping...it all has to be done by pulling power...

 

Both auto and stick take skill to drive, and it's different for each. A manual requires more coordination between the hands and feet though.

 

Exactly.

 

my question is: which one generally makes the car faster? i guess it depends on the driver right? so many people bash people about having an auto but wouldnt the auto, most of the time, out run the stick on the 1/4 mile? (assuming the cars were identicle power)

 

yup, couldnt have said it any better.

 

In lowto moderate HP cars I'd say the stick is the way to go. Once you start laying down big boy numbers the auto is the better set-up for drag racing.