[cptobvious]

Originally Posted by CSBM5

That's the problem with all these "races." Basic physics. Trying to launch a car at exactly the same time and get a perfect hookup on both cars (or three at a time) is extremely difficult for 99% of drivers. Now put them on a strip and put pro-level drag racers behind the wheels, and we'll get some consistency going. Just look at the first couple of races where the blue M2 launches way ahead of the other two cars. These aren't actual races of the cars as much as examples of the driver's abilities to launch on time (not too early, not too late) and being able to hook hard off the line.

The same thing happens in roll-on comparisons. For whatever reason (well, it's a standard human bias actually), the majority of people don't understand time versus distance versus velocity when they see it in action. They let their eyes fool them into what they think is obvious but in fact 100% false.

Take two absolutely identical cars, with everything exactly identical and driven absolutely identically. Put them in a roll-on battle. The driver in car A hits the throttle 0.2 seconds quicker than car B. Off they go. What happens? Car A will continually open up the gap between the two cars as they accelerate. Most watch and proclaim car A is "faster". I mean, LOOK! It continually increased the gap between itself and car B!! How can it not be faster?

Because it's not. They're identical and accelerating identically. The difference is the initial time gap to start the acceleration run. It's within typical human reaction time too. The cars will always be 0.2 seconds apart since they are accelerating identically but starting with a different initial condition.

By 60mph, car A will be 17.6' ahead of car B. By 120 mph, car A will be 32.2' ahead, and at 155mph car A will be 45.5' ahead. All in attendance will proclaim car A the "faster car" (even though they are absolutely identical).

The same thing happens on a track when even announcers proclaim how one car "pulls away" from the other behind it only to be "almost caught" in the next corner. These cars are likely near identical too and driven very well, so in fact there isn't any "faster car down the straights" but instead the car in front will *always* be on the throttle ahead of the 2nd one exiting the turn onto the straight. The identical cars doing identical laps times will *always* show the car in front "pulling away" from the car behind as velocity increases on a straight. Always...since they are doing exactly the same lap times, the time gap between them remains constant, so the distance between them will always vary as a function of velocity (assuming they are doing exactly the speed at every point in their lap time, i.e. perfectly identical cars/drivers). The net of it is that what needs to be evaluated is the time gap between the two cars, not the distance gap. Eyes see distance gap differences and trick the brain into making false conclusions.

Whew! Sorry for the brain dump here...two cups of coffee will do that.

This is AWESOME. I was a physics major, and it never occurred to me that this is what was going on. The power of cognitive biases and illusions! But after your explanation, makes perfect sense!