Hmmmm, Id say I agree that York is faster although not for the same reason that Mr Jealous on Scoobynet says. York has the advantage for road cars that it has a choice of launch zones, depending on whether you are running road tyres or slicks. As there is a very close correlation between time gained/lost over the first 60ft and the complete quarter mile run, then this obviously makes a difference. For the majority of road cars (i.e. less than 500bhp) the surface at both Santa Pod and York is relatively good once youre up to the 330ft mark and youre unlikely to keep spinning all the way to the line, so that can be discounted.
York themselves will tell you that the road car launch surface is worth 2/10 of a second and thats near enough what I reckoned it at a couple of years ago when I was doing a lot of runs at both dragways - somewhere around 0.3 seconds quicker at York I always found.
I wouldnt say theyre the same at all, York IS definitely faster IMHO but I am pretty certain its down to the launch zone/first 60ft of road surface, not some timing error or any other crap like that. Im also pretty sure that most of the time at the Pod youre driving into the wind but couldnt say for certain. I do know that they spray a load of glue and sh*t on the track for the benefit of the one junior dragster that keeps barging in on the RWYB cars the whole time. I can say without a doubt that when I ran a mailto:14.1@99mph">14.1@99mph at Santa Pod, if Id then gone up to York that would have been a mailto:13.8@106mph">13.8@106mph or thereabouts.
Put it this way, not taking anything away from those that put in their times at York, cos Ive done a lot of times there myself, but if I was after saying Im the quickest, I would do a run at both York AND the Pod and not just rely on one or the other. Pod timing gear f**ks up just as often as anywhere else, the amount of wacko results you get in one lane only at the Pod is unreal.
