Hi, everyone I was wondering if any of you guys can help me and my frien settle a dispute, we are argueing about whether on a drag (2 of the exact same cars and driver) stick or auto would be faster? I say auto and he says stick. PLEASE HELP!!!

 

depends on the car. if its like the m3 smg tranny, shifting is faster than manual. if its a slower conventional tranny then manual will be faster.

 

Like he said it depends on the car. stick shift cars are harder to get off of the line

 

well how about on my friends pos integra, he asked me to post this on the evo forums because on the integra forums the majority of people dont know what they are talking about and you guys are very knowledgable.

 

gearing also has a bit to do with it, more so with NA cars. If you have a 5 speed manual and a 4 speed auto, the 5 speed has better (shorter) gearing (and less parasitic loss through a manual) than an auto so it should be a bit faster. but i think you can only apply this to street driven cars, not drag monsters.

 

A properly set up automatic is a faster drag setup. Almost all extremely fast drag cars used pupose built automatics. You can get an automatic to shift just as fast as a manual, but the real advantage is the torque converter, which multiplies torque.

However, take your average OEM car, and an automatic will not be faster. Like I said, it needs to be built up for drag

 

Manuals always have shorter gearing, at least in the first few gears because there is no torque converter to aid in a quick launch and increase driveability. The only way a manual can have high torque off the line is to have an extremely short 1st and 2nd gear.

 

auto

 

stock-manual
built with higher stall torque conv for good launch-auto

Unless I am mistaken, the fastest drag cars are auto

 

wrx auto 0-60 6.8 secs
wrx 5 spd 6.0 secs

Stock turbo autos cant really be revved to powerband to launch, unless u left foot brake

 

The auto drag cars are using F1 type shifters if I am not mistaken. They use hydraulic pressure to ram the next gear in. In a sense you can call this an automatic but it is built like a manual. Try Audis DSG now that shifts clean and faster than BMW SMG without the losses of the auto box gear train.