Model 3 Performance 1-foot rollout

[Siciliano]

You don't "do" one, it's just a difference in how the device measures your time.

With something like a draggy you just launch as normal.

(at an actual drag strip, where the term comes from, and launch is measuring with staged timing lights, there's an actual difference in timing based on how deep or shallow into the lights you stage the car)

It's interesting because if you were really allowed to just roll (even very slowly) for a foot or two and then punch it, the 0-60 times and 1/4 mile would be a good bit better due to momentum alone. It's pretty different than just punching it from a dig as usual and just subtracting off some time...

 

[Knightshade]

It's interesting because if you were really allowed to just roll (even very slowly) for a foot or two and then punch it, the 0-60 times and 1/4 mile would be a good bit better due to momentum alone. It's pretty different than just punching it from a dig as usual and just subtracting off some time...

Stolen from elsewhere because it explains how the drag strip works and where rollout originated-


As a car creeps toward the two light beams of the starting area, its front tire will eventually block the first beam and trigger a "prestage" warning. This informs the driver that the official starting line, where the "stage beam" shines across the track, is only seven inches ahead. When the front tire triggers that second beam, the vehicle is properly staged for a run. However, the vehicle's position can still vary by well over a foot while its front tires are blocking the stage beam. This is critical, because the drag-strip clock does not start until the second light, or stage beam, is uncovered. It is this distance that is the critical rollout.


So basically when you would stage the car at the strip, you could either "deep" stage or "shallow" stage....depending what you were trying to maximize.


Shallow staging involves rolling through the starting area until both the prestage and stage lights are lit. This maximizes the amount of rollout you have, which improves elapsed time at the expense of reaction time. This is the technique recommended for new bracket racers until they learn proper launch procedures.

Deep staging is used to reduce reaction times. To deep stage, roll the car up until you trigger the prestage and stage lights, then move forward slowly until the prestage bulbs go out. This puts more of your front tires ahead of the stage beam—and less tire that needs to go through the stage beam and trigger the ET clock. That will improve your reaction time, but also increases your chances of redlighting if you don’t time your launch just right.




Anyway- given how popular drag strips were when performance cars and car magazines got big, it became industry standard to use 1 foot rollout in measuring performance/acceleration stuff like 1/4 mile times and such.


Interestingly- this is largely a US standard. So US companies typically advertise all their cars performance numbers this way and US car mags generally report their own testing numbers this way.

Foreign car companies (the germans most prominently) tend NOT to do this.... and report the flat numbers instead... which is why when US car mags test german cars they usually beat the MFG listed times by several tenths of a second- because they're using rollout and BMW and friends are not.


Tesla as mentioned is AFAIK is the only company dishonest enough to list their cars using 2 different measurements depending on the trim of car, making the difference between them appear larger than it really is

 

[BrandX]

Rollout (drag racing) - Wikipedia