Bracket racing
Bracket Racing Logbook and Dial-In Analysis
Bracket racing is won and lost on dial-ins. The logbook captures every dial-in you've ever run, predicts the next one from your actual data + live air, and gives you a between-round screen built for the trailer instead of the office.
Built for bracket racers, not retrofitted
Most drag racing apps treat the dial-in field as an afterthought. This one was designed around it. The time slip scanner captures dial-in from every slip. The Log Run dialog has dial-in as a primary field, not buried in a notes section. The ET predictor outputs are formatted so you can copy a dial-in straight from the screen, with safety-margin presets for tree luck.
Bracket racing's hardest problem is the round-by-round adjustment. Conditions change between Q1 and the final. The logbook tracks the change automatically — live weather, live DA, live predicted ET — so you walk to the lanes with a number, not a hunch.
Dial-in prediction
The predictor outputs a target ET based on your historical runs in this car under today's conditions. The Race Mode screen shows that number prominently with the option to copy it into your dial-in field. From there you decide your safety margin: 0.02s under the predictor is a common bracket-racer dial, 0.03–0.04s for tougher conditions or unproven tunes.
If you're running a class with a fixed index (Super Comp 8.90, Super Gas 9.90, Super Street 10.90), the predictor still helps — it tells you how much you're running under or over the index in current conditions, which informs throttle stop adjustment.
Race Mode: the between-round screen
Race Mode is full-screen, big-touch, designed for use in the staging lanes on a phone. You see every car you own as a card, with the current predicted ET on each card and the most recent runs of the session right under it.
Quick-log a run from a slip in two taps. The dial-in field is large enough for gloved fingers. The predictor updates when weather changes — the card shows you the delta from the last run so you can spot a 600 ft DA shift before the staging tree comes on.
Slip scanning with dial-in capture
When you scan a slip, the dial-in column is extracted along with everything else. So your run history doesn't just contain ETs and conditions — it contains what you dialed and what you ran. The delta between dial-in and actual is searchable and chartable: "how often did I break out last weekend" is one query.
Win/loss is captured from the slip too (when printed) or from a one-tap toggle on the Log Run dialog. Over a season, the W-L record per dial-in delta becomes one of the more useful filters for understanding your own tendencies — most racers underestimate how often they break out, or how often they push the tree.
Trends that matter to bracket racers
The dashboard surfaces the metrics a bracket racer cares about:
- Best dial-in accuracy — actual ET minus dial-in, averaged across the season
- Reaction time average and standard deviation per car
- Predicted ET vs actual ET (calibration check on the model)
- Win-loss record at each track
- Trend lines on dial-in over the season — getting more conservative or more aggressive?
Index racing support
Super Comp, Super Gas, Super Street, and Stock/Super Stock racers don't pick a dial-in but they do throttle-stop or trim setup to hit an index. The logbook treats those classes the same as bracket — predicted ET is the key number, and the comparison to index tells you whether throttle stop is open enough or closed too much.
The class field on each car can be set to "Super Comp" / "Super Gas" / etc. and the predictor uses the class context when picking columns off a multi-class slip — useful for racers who run the same car in multiple classes over a weekend.
Example: how it works in practice
Given
Saturday bracket race. Round 1 ran 8.94 on a 9.00 dial. Round 2 air dropped about 800 ft DA from morning to afternoon. You're heading to the lanes for round 3.
Result
Open Race Mode. The current predicted ET for your car at the new DA is 8.91 ± 0.018s. Round 1's 8.94 was at the morning DA; the predictor knows that and reflects the air shift. Dial 8.91 with your usual 0.02 margin → 8.93. Or, knowing the air is dropping further into the evening, 8.92 with 0.01 margin. The card shows you 8.91 with the confidence band so you can pick your own margin instead of guessing.
Frequently asked questions about bracket racing
How is this different from a Cordeo or DA Pro?
Cordeo and DA Pro fit a curve to a small number of runs. This logbook stores every run with full atmospheric and gauge data, fits a weighted regression that tracks per-track and per-condition, and updates live with weather changes. Plus you get photo evidence (time slips, weather, gauges) attached to every run.
Does the predictor handle throttle stops?
For index racing, yes — the predicted ET is what your car would run wide open. You compare to the index to decide throttle-stop setting. The logbook also stores throttle-timer values per run (read from logbook pages via AI) so you can correlate stop changes to ET changes.
Can I track dial-in vs actual in a chart?
Yes. The runs page has a "dial-in delta" view that plots actual minus dial across the season. Negative deltas (you broke out) and positive ones (you ran over) show up clearly, and rolling averages tell you whether your dial-in is converging on the car's real number.
Is there a reaction-time tracker?
Reaction time is captured on every run and shown on the dashboard as a season average + standard deviation. Per-car and per-track filters available.
Will the predictor stop me from breaking out?
It can't stop you, but if you adopt a small safety margin (0.02–0.03s) against the predicted ET as your dial-in, your breakout rate will drop fast. Bracket racers who switch from "gut feel" dial-ins to predictor-based dial-ins typically report a 20–30% reduction in breakouts within a season.
Start using Bracket racing in Drag Race Logbook Pro
5 manual runs + 2 logbook pages on the free plan. No credit card required. Pro is unlimited — cancel anytime.