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A burnout (also known as a peel out, power brake, or brakestand) is the practice of keeping a vehicle stationary and spinning its wheels, the resultant friction causing the tires to heat up and smoke.
The origins of burnouts can be traced to drag racing, where they have a practical purpose: drag racing slicks perform better at higher temperatures, and a burnout is the quickest way to raise tire temperature immediately prior to a race. They also clean the tire of any debris and lay down a layer of rubber by the starting line for better traction. Drag race tracks sometimes use a specially-reserved wet-surface area known as the "water box", because water is poured onto a certain area to reduce the friction to initiate the burnout. [1] This was once called a "bleach box", when bleach was used instead of water; this began in 1969, [2] the year the first burnout was done in NHRA, at the Hot Rod Magazine Championship Drag Races in Riverside, California. [3] Don Garlits was the first to do burnouts across the starting line, which is now standard practice. [4] Water, bleach and resin were used, and water is said to work as well as bleach. [5] Early on, traction compound RFI also produced the spectacular flame burnouts. [6] The hazard of using flammable traction compound led NHRA to mandate use of water, instead. [7]
Burnouts eventually became a serious form of competition and entertainment in their own right. Considerable prize money or goods are sometimes involved, and cars may even be sponsored or purpose-built specifically as "burnout cars". Burnout contests are judged on crowd response, with style and attitude therefore being important factors. Such contests are particularly popular in Australia but often occur in North America as well.
Burnouts are also common in informal street racing, usually for show value. As with all street racing activities, burnouts on public property are illegal in most countries but the severity of punishments vary. In New South Wales, Australia, for example, police have the power to confiscate the offending vehicle for 3 months for a first offense. [8] In March 2010, British Formula 1 World Champion, Lewis Hamilton had his Mercedes car impounded for allegedly performing a burnout in Melbourne, Australia while leaving the Albert Park Grand-Prix Circuit. [9]
Burnouts are also frequently performed by winning drivers at the end of NASCAR races to celebrate their victory.
Performing a burnout in a front wheel drive vehicle is usually achieved by engaging the parking brake to lock up the rear tires along with stomping the gas to break the front wheels loose.
To perform a burnout in a rear wheel drive vehicle the driver has to simultaneously engage the gas and brake pedals. The brake pedal will require modulation, as the goal is to allow the rear tires to spin while holding the car in place with the front wheels remaining motionless. At a certain point of balance, the front brakes will prevent the car from moving forward while the rear brakes will have insufficient grip to keep the wheels from spinning, since engine power is transferred to the rear wheels only.
To do a burnout in a manual transmission vehicle you first start in neutral, then you press and hold the clutch, shift into first gear, floor the gas, and finally dump the clutch and quickly move your foot onto the brake pedal to hold the brakes. After this you can then release off the brakes to peel out or you can stand on it. It is worth noting that this will put a large amount of strain on your drivetrain due to the shock from engaging the clutch.
It is possible to make rear-wheel drive burnouts easier by installing "line locks", which allows the front brakes to be selectively activated by holding down a switch and releasing the brake pedal and freeing the rear brakes. [10]
Burnouts are most difficult to perform in four-wheel drive and all-wheel drive cars, as they have better traction than FWD or RWD vehicles. It requires significantly more powerful engines to break all four tires loose at the same time, and the tires will spin for only a short while before all four gain traction.
Another burnout technique is aimed at cars with insufficient power to perform a burnout from a standing-still position. It involves putting the car into reverse, reversing at a higher speed than normal and then quickly putting the car into first gear and hitting the accelerator. A variant of this is to reverse at an angle which will result in two (for cars with limited slip differentials) distinctive skidmarks once the car pushes forward — in Arab parts of the world, this trick is called the "88", as the skidmarks resemble two number-eights in Arabic ("٨ ٨"). In the United States, these marks are referred to as "fishhooks", a very accurate description of the skidmarks as the car will leave a longer mark when the vehicle's velocity becomes aligned with its forward direction. During this stunt, the vehicle always experiences a (not necessarily constant) acceleration vector pointing along the car's forward direction, but the velocity vector will reverse direction from initially pointing backwards to forward, leaving the "hook" mark.
At least as late as the 1970s in the United States, burnout enthusiasts would occasionally coat their (usually rear) drive wheel tires with a liquid chlorine-type bleach. This would result in spectacular bursts of white smoke during the burnout.
These and similar techniques are generally not recommended because they place a great load on drivetrain components and can result in transmission damage. The effective lifetime of the drive wheel tires is appropriately shortened.
An additional technique sometimes used by those celebrating a race victory (such as in NASCAR) is to position the racecar so that its nose is against the outside wall of the track, helping keep the car in place as the rear wheels spin.
Drag racing is a type of motor racing in which automobiles or motorcycles compete, usually two at a time, to be first to cross a set finish line. The race follows a short, straight course from a standing start over a measured distance, most commonly 1⁄4 mi, with a shorter, 1,000 ft distance becoming increasingly popular, as it has become the standard for Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars, where some major bracket races and other sanctioning bodies have adopted it as the standard. The 1⁄8 mi is also popular in some circles. Electronic timing and speed sensing systems have been used to record race results since the 1960s.
A brake is a mechanical device that inhibits motion by absorbing energy from a moving system. It is used for slowing or stopping a moving vehicle, wheel, axle, or to prevent its motion, most often accomplished by means of friction.
Left-foot braking is the technique of using the left foot to operate the brake pedal in an automobile, leaving the right foot dedicated to the throttle pedal. It contrasts with the practice of using the left foot to operate the clutch pedal, leaving the right foot to share the duties of controlling both brake and gas pedals.
Opposite lock, also commonly known as counter-steering, is a colloquial term used to mean the steering associated with the deliberate use of oversteer to turn a vehicle rapidly without losing momentum. It is typified by the classic rallying style of rear-wheel drive cars, where a car travels around a bend with a large drift angle. The terms "opposite lock" and "counter-steering" refer to the position of the steering wheel during the maneuver, which is turned in the opposite direction to that of the bend.
A traction control system (TCS), also known as ASR, is typically a secondary function of the electronic stability control (ESC) on production motor vehicles, designed to prevent loss of traction of the driven road wheels. TCS is activated when throttle input and engine power and torque transfer are mismatched to the road surface conditions.
Understeer and oversteer are vehicle dynamics terms used to describe the sensitivity of a vehicle to steering. Oversteer is what occurs when a car turns (steers) by more than the amount commanded by the driver. Conversely, understeer is what occurs when a car steers less than the amount commanded by the driver.
A limited-slip differential (LSD) is a type of differential that allows its two output shafts to rotate at different speeds but limits the maximum difference between the two shafts. Limited-slip differentials are often known by the generic trademark Positraction, a brand name owned by General Motors.
quattro is the trademark used by the automotive brand Audi to indicate that all-wheel drive (AWD) technologies or systems are used on specific models of its automobiles.
Automobile handling and vehicle handling are descriptions of the way a wheeled vehicle responds and reacts to the inputs of a driver, as well as how it moves along a track or road. It is commonly judged by how a vehicle performs particularly during cornering, acceleration, and braking as well as on the vehicle's directional stability when moving in steady state condition.
Aquaplaning or hydroplaning by the tires of a road vehicle, aircraft or other wheeled vehicle occurs when a layer of water builds between the wheels of the vehicle and the road surface, leading to a loss of traction that prevents the vehicle from responding to control inputs. If it occurs to all wheels simultaneously, the vehicle becomes, in effect, an uncontrolled sled. Aquaplaning is a different phenomenon from when water on the surface of the roadway merely acts as a lubricant. Traction is diminished on wet pavement even when aquaplaning is not occurring.
The front-engine dragster is a type of racing car purposely built for drag racing. Commonly known as a "rail", "digger", or "slingshot", it is now considered obsolete, and is used only in nostalgia drag racing. Wheelbases ranged from 97 to 225 inches.
Fishtailing is a vehicle handling problem which occurs when the rear wheels lose traction, resulting in oversteer. This can be caused by low friction surfaces. Rear-drive vehicles with sufficient power can induce this loss of traction on any surface, which is called power-oversteer.
The Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle (CERV) is a series of Chevrolet experimental cars. Chevrolet Staff engineer, designer, and race car driver Zora Arkus-Duntov started development of the CERV I in 1959, and began work on the CERV II in 1963. Chevrolet chief engineer Don Runkle and Lotus' Tony Rudd discussed creating a new show car to demonstrate their engineering expertise in 1985; It would become the CERV III. Corvette chief engineer Dave Hill unveiled the CERV IV in 1993, a test vehicle for the 1997 C5 Corvette.
Clutch control refers to the act of controlling the speed of a vehicle with a manual transmission by partially engaging the clutch plate, using the clutch pedal instead of the accelerator pedal. The purpose of a clutch is in part to allow such control; in particular, a clutch provides transfer of torque between shafts spinning at different speeds. In the extreme, clutch control is used in performance driving, such as starting from a dead stop with the engine producing maximum torque at high RPM.
A wheelspin occurs when the force delivered to the tire tread exceeds that of available tread-to-surface friction and one or more tires lose traction.This leads the wheels to "spin" and causes the driver to lose control over the tires that no longer have grip on the road surface. Wheelspin can also be done intentionally such as in drifting or doing a burnout.
A line lock is a device that allows the front brakes to lock independently of the rear brakes via a switch. The device is an electric solenoid that controls a valve which allows the brakes to be controlled individually. This allows the front brakes to be locked and the rear brakes to be open, and allows the driver to spin the rear wheels without wasting the rear brakes. This method is referred to as line lock and is popular among enthusiasts who like to do burnouts.
The following is a glossary of terminology used in motorsport, along with explanations of their meanings.
An automobile skid is an automobile handling condition where one or more tires are slipping relative to the road, and the overall handling of the vehicle has been affected.
A dragster is a specialized competition automobile used in drag racing.
The brake balance or brake bias of a vehicle is the distribution of brake force at the front and rear tires, and may be given as the percentage distributed to the front brakes or as the ratio of front and rear percentages. The braking balance affects the driving characteristics in terms of how fast the vehicle can brake, how the vehicle can take corners, and tire wear. The optimal brake balance can vary between circuits, weather conditions and driving styles. On race cars, the brake balance is often part of the racing setup, and in formula car racing it is regularly adjusted during the course of an entire lap. In some cases, the brake balance may be adjusted to match the traction (grip) of the vehicle during braking, which usually means distributing a greater braking force to the front. In other cases, it may be desirable for the brake balance to be the more similar at the front and rear for the tires to last longer, which may be beneficial in endurance racing. Adjustment of the brake balance is often done by adjusting a proportioning valve which determines the distribution of the brake force between the front and rear brakes. The adjustment can be made via mechanical couplings or with the help of a small electric motor.
