Drag race: Tesla Model S vs Corvette Stingray

[kevm14]

http://www.autoweek.com/article/2014012 ... dailydrive

I guess I forgot about drag racing, but the video said the Tesla won the first race by 0.02 and the Corvette won the second race by 0.07. But when I look at the time slip, it looks like the Corvette won the first race by 0.364 and the second race by 0.329.

Apparently they added the reaction time to the final ET to get the actual time between a green light and crossing the lights. Who on earth uses that for judging anything? Why would you factor driver reaction time into this equation? Anyway, the Tesla is impressive nonetheless, running 12.3s. Definitely faster than my CTS-V. The 60' times are just as good as the Corvette, as well (I guess I'd expect that).

But look at that trap speed! 6-8mph off. Granted, 110 is still quite quick, but the Corvette would walk away briskly if these two punched it from any speed (the faster the more apparent the delta).

[Adam]

Who on earth uses that for judging anything?

The NHRA does during competition, but no one does for bench racing. Which is what comparison articles are.

[kevm14]

Ok, I can buy that. NHRA races are driver + car. For bench racing, I really don't care that the guy in the Tesla hit the gas a little sooner than the guy in the Corvette. The ET and MPH are all I need to know. But those video captions are really misleading because I don't think many people understand that at all.

I should also mention that the driver is important for reasons other than R/T, obviously. But R/T is just R/T and really has almost no bearing on the car itself.

[Adam]

Misleading headlines to drive traffic to the article?!? I've never seen that on the Internet before. This must be some new trend.

[kevm14]

The headline wasn't misleading. They also didn't clear anything up in the article. But the video captions were clearly misleading. There's youtube commentary on it, as you might expect.

[Adam]

Maybe I should have read the article....whoops!