drag strips prove who can drive and who cannot, I think it has very little to do with the car. Road courses can also show a drivers abilities or flaws, but setup is very very important. Anyone can mash the gas on a highway monster, maybe occasionally downshift and upshift, and you can’t forget, honk your horn.
I have a perfect example for the 1/4mile. My buddy has a pretty nice LS1 2000 TA, it had a built auto, with a nice stall, a tune and header back. He went 12.6 with a 1.6 60’ on street tires. Now take into consideration he only had to sit and watch the lights, then mash the gas…right. Well he wanted to do a T56 6 spd swap and did. He went with a “slightly” built T56 and an upgraded clutch of some sort. His first time back to the track with the 6spd the fastest he ran was a 13.4 with a 2.2 60ft. He claims he needs a new tune, the only thing on his car that changed was the tranny, and he won’t go back.
Point is, he realized he sucks at driving his new T56 6 spd and is too embarrassed to go back.
But you don’t get better running the 1/4 mile by watching Pass Times on the speed network, or reading John Force books, you get better with seat time. Many guys just need to suck up their pride and get out there and improve their times, I have…and I could probably still improve many things.
Parts are gonna break regardless of where you run, the strip, street, or road course…IMHO i think a road course is way harder on a car than a less than 14 second (or Less) trip down a 1/4 track. Even beating a car on the highway doing high speed pulls isn’t the best for an engine. If a car is fast, it’s fucking fast, but I have seen numerous cars get beat because of a much needed driver mod, something a tuning company cannot provide.
