Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I watched an interesting video of Rico Abreau explaining how his car is different than others. His gas peddle is typical of what I've always seen. It has a spring that plays against the force of your foot pushing down. The brake pedal, however, seemed funky.

He said like brake pedals in other sprint cars, you braked not by pushing your foot down, but by sliding your foot forward. Does that seem right?

That's correct, you push the brake pedal forward towards the motor plate to apply the brakes.

Thanks for the reply. It just seems counterintuative to me. For 50 years I've been pushing down on the gas peddle with my right foot, and pushing down on the brakes with my left foot. If I had to pay attention to doing something a little different with my feet while racing I'd probably crash.

I actually built my cars to push down on the brake pedal. My knee didn't like the pressure it took to press forward.

Problem with pushing down is the master cyclinder is down so low it's a bitch to bleed and I ended up using a residual valve to keep slight pressure to the brakes.

Yes you push forward but actually its not that much different than any other car including your passenger car. The difference lies in the relationship of the pedal to the seat and how you sit in them. Kinda like sitting at the kitchen table with your feet flat on the floor. 
 This reminds me of a situation that happened when i first started racing. It was at lawrenceburg and towards the end of the season. One of the contenders for the track championship had car trouble so he was asking around the pits if anyone would let him drive their car.  Another competitor agreed. The problem was this competitor had an artificial right leg.  He couldnt work the throttle with it so his solution was to swap placement of throttle & brake. It worked well for him ( i didnt even know he had a fake leg and id been to his house!).  The other guy got in the car and it was almost histerical! No way he was gonna adapt to the swapped pedals in one night !

That makes sense that when sitting upright, the feeling of pushing your foot down or pushing your foot forward would be about the same. Who decided to have sprint car brake pedals slide forward, and why? Is there any advantage?

You run a 6 to 1 pedal ratio so by mounting the pedal pivot up high it makes it easier to mount the master and to bleed the brakes.

That's why Ricos master is above the steering gear. His legs are shorter but yet he needs the 6 to 1 pedal ratio. With the pedal length required he had to raise the pivot point and master so his foot would reach the pedal.

Does an extra tall driver have to have his brake peddle set up differently than an averge height driver?

Side note: In the early 70's, my brother-in-law pitted for a very tall driver in western South Dakota. He went shopping for a new car, as they were transitioning from modifieds to sprint cars. The team drove to eastern S.D. to look at a sprint car for sale. When the driver managed to get himself into the car, his view ahead was over the top of the front rollbars.