I’d venture to say 70% plus of drag cars are NOT shifted manually.
Are you really sure of that ?
No matter what RPMS the motor can produce, the lag between “increasing RPMS” and the inevitable “MAX RPMS” and the vacuum needed to signal a shift “automatically” is lost power.
I would venture to say that Drag racers are manually shifting in order to maintain an “increasing” RPM engine output.
I hang out at Lucas Oil Raceway all summer long here in Indy .
That’s where they run the biggest race in drag racing, the US Nationals.
They can be programmed to shift at a predetermined RPM. Most of those engines are dyno tested repeatedly and their torque curves mapped and analyzed constantly.
The engine in a drag car only runs full throttle for a few seconds, the accuracy and timing of the shift points is critical for a winning run...lots of things are.
Barometric pressure, air temp, relative humidity, tire pressure, track temp, wind direction, fuel characteristics, what the driver had for breakfast...