Pick your class, then hit the tree.
About The Drag Car Racer
A quarter-mile drag race is over in well under fifteen seconds, and most of it is decided before the car has gone a hundred feet. The Drag Car Racer puts you on an NHRA-style dragstrip against a CPU opponent, so you can practice the parts that actually win races: staging cleanly, reacting to the tree, launching hard and shifting at the right moment. Once you have three clean runs in a class, the other lane becomes your own 3rd-best run, and every time you beat it, the bar moves up.
Roll up until both blue staging bulbs light, get off the gas, wait for the ambers to flash, and go on green. Leave early and it's a red light, with no time recorded. Every run gives you a real time slip, with reaction time, 60-foot, 330-foot, eighth-mile and 1,000-foot times, ET and trap speed, and your best ETs are saved to a top-5 leaderboard for each class. Or pick bracket racing: set a dial-in, take a handicap start against the CPU's dial, and try to run your number without breaking out.
Five ways to take tenths off your ET
- Always do the burnout. It's a free bit of launch grip, and it happens before the clock starts.
- Stage, then lift. Get off the gas the moment the second blue bulb lights. Touching it again before the green is a red light.
- Learn the Pro tree's rhythm. The green comes 0.4 seconds after the ambers, so don't jump the ambers.
- Shift on the amber shift light. It comes on a little past peak power, where the next gear starts pulling harder. Riding the limiter or shifting early both cost time.
- Stay in it through the stripe. Lifting early costs trap speed and ET.
New to drag racing? Start in C/Stock, the most forgiving class, and move up to B/Stock and A/Stock once you're consistently beating your own 3rd best.
Read the full guide: staging, the tree, shifting, time slips and controls →
Learn how drag racing works
Want to understand what's really happening at the line? These articles explain the real sport behind the simulator.
- How the Christmas Tree Works: pre-stage, stage, Pro and Sportsman trees
- Reaction Time Explained: why a perfect light is .000
- How to Read a Time Slip: 60-foot, ET, trap speed and more
- Bracket Racing and Dial-Ins: how any two cars race fairly
- Shift Points: Power, Torque and When to Shift
- Burnouts and Traction: why the first 60 feet matter most
- Power-to-Weight and Your ET, with an ET calculator
- Drag Racing Glossary