http://www.precisecontacts.com/videos.html

Here is a perfect example of a 650 horsepower supra runing a 10 second quarter mile on street drag radials, i guarantee you he didn't do it with torque!
Click on the showdown video between the skyline and supra.

Edit: 680 horsepower supra my bad

 

I bet that Supra had a 2 step

My experience comes from, 14 years working for one of the OEM's in chassis systems. 8 years of drag racing experience, 6 years of road racing experience. I run driving schools during the summer months up here. I've built quite a few different cars including a 680hp twin turbo LS1 Camaro that didn't go as fast as I wanted...because I couldn't get it to spool and make torque down load. It MPH'd like crazy but no ET, at least not for the trap speed. My car for its MPH, 132, should have ran mid-low 10's never came close. It would have with a two step but too much $ in broken parts launching with 600ft lbs at the wheels.

Horsepower is a made up number regardless, it is derived from torque.

Diesel trucks and diesel power plants generally do not drag well because they are not geared for it. There are plenty of 10/11 second Cummin's trucks out there. They just need to be geared right and setup for it.

I don't care what kind of car it is, streetability issues come up in the 10 second range, especially with auto's. Manual cars can get away with a lot but your replacing parts a lot.

Horsepower, or torque over time, is a fact in top end, but 85 percent of your ET is set by the time you get to the 1/8th mile.

Thats why it takes expotential amounts of power to go from 10's, to 9's, to 8's. By the 1/8 mile your already traveling so fast you have even less time to pick up speed.

I'll have to dig up some time slips but look at a bunch of cars that turn similar ET's with wildly different MPH's and compare their 1/8th mile mph. For a tenth or two those higher hp cars are running an extra 5-15mph which is huge power difference but not picking up a lot of ET.

Car type doesn't matter either. Its weight, gearing, and the torque curve...for the 100+mph cars aero comes into play too.

So it doesn't matter if its a Camaro, Corvette, Audi, whatever. A car is a car, power is power.

I've owned foreign, domestic, etc, some cars are easier to setup.

I think my A6 could run a very low 13, even a high 12...once....it'd have to be one helluva perfect day to break 12's but I doubt it would do it more than once.

You can't say either that it takes 500hp to get into the 10's, deppends on the weight of the car. I've seen 300hp cars in the 10's, its all about converter setup and torque. A 2700lb car with 400rwhp will run 10's...now I said HP which doesn't follow my arguement but thats calculating backwards. There are some rules to HP and ET dealing with NA applications. Some others dealing with N20...Superchargers are not tough to figure out but Turbo cars are all over the map.

I'll dig up some examples of time slips and post them up, that will paint a clearer picture.

 

No 2 step, no transbrake

I think its more of a harmony of torque and horsepower combined with traction that gets you down the track in a fast order. Im still sticking with the horsepower as being more important. Once the car is moving its all up to the horsepower the car has to keep the POS moving. I believe that having more horsepower than torque at the drag strip is always more important.
For instance, if you have 1,000 ftlbs of torque and only 500 horsepower on a car (lets say RWD supra) no transbrake with slicks, i would say it would run an 11 flat. It would jump all over the place. Unless there is one bad **** driving it....

 

I typed a bunch of stuff out and the website puked.

Did the Supra have N20?

Read this, its a much better way of explaining things that what I've been trying:

http://craig.backfire.ca/pages/autos/horsepower

Look at the example at the bottom in regards to the 500hp v8 and the 500hp 4 cylinder.

 

I don't know much about the supra other than that he neutral drops it and eventually broke the damn tranny LOL. I don't think he has nitrous.
I have read that link before, awesome link BTW.
This is my favorite quote in that link. " Peak power sells cars. High average power wins races. "

 

Ok, i need to throw some input in here. What auditech is saying is correct. HP is what makes for a low e/t and high mph 1/4 time. The only time tq is really a factor is in 1st gear and then its hp all the way to the finish. Dont forget that hp is just a factor of tq, the further you can push the peak, the higher the hp. I bring this up because when we are talking turbo engines (think this is where you 2 are having this misunderstanding) the tq gain between turbos drops off dramatically the bigger the turbo you run due to increasing lag (again hp formula). This is how these little 1.8 and 2.0L engines are making 600-700whp and still having < /= 400wtq and can run low 10s. Now i will admit i dont know much about big motor V8's and all that, but as far as i know, most have a 5-6k redline and make roughly the same tq as hp, so i can see how saying higher tq will lower e/t's, but it seems like you (eric) are talking 1/8th which isnt a impressive thing.