Shine..........At the dragstrip, ease through the water, stop with the rear tires in the water, then ease out of the water a few feet, put your car in 2nd gear, stop and the nail it enough to get the car to sling itself forward. stop straighten up the car and ease to the tree and ease into staging. When the first amber light is lit ease forward to just bearly get the second amber light to come on. Do not ease forward into the second amber light any further as you will then be deep staged and that is a no no. Take your foot off the brake and rev the motor up to about 3000 pr and holdit until the lights come down. Just as the last amber light comes on, NAIL IT and be ready to compensate for some squareliness. If you have wheel hop, get off of it and try playing with your air pressure in the rear tires. Of course when you stage at the light, make sure you take off in 1st gear, not second. I have found in Vipers.....it is NOT necessary to do a big smokey burnout...All that is doing is tearing up your clutch, wear and tear on the motor and tires. You can heat the tires up too much and then it won't launch as good. Basically all you need is just a decent spin off the tires to hest them up and get the dirt,rocks and water off of them and the car will hook up fine. Now with street tires with tred DO NOT do the water box routine I mentioned above...... Pull slowly completely out away from any water, then put it in 2nd gear and just nail it like I said before.(Some people when approaching the watch try to ease around the water puddle to not get water on the front tires and then go thru the above routine) That water can drip down onto your tires at staging and just cause problems hooking up. It is a total waste of time, clutch and tires to do a burnout on street tires. Just spin them to clean them off, dirt, rocks, etc. All that smokey burnout looks great to everyone but we all know that the Viper will spin the tires for days and burn the tire tread clean off but at your expense, not theirs. The Pilot Sport Cups you have, you can do the first burnout I mentioned above. I am by far no expert. This is just the way most racers do it and even with a line lock, You still don't want to sit there and just smoke the heck out of the tires and overheat them. Unless you are just wanting to impress the crowd. But then when you make the pass, the crowd will not be impressed with you ET. I would rather have an impressive ET. Sorry everyone for talking sooooo long here..Just trying to help and give my 2 cents. Have fun at the track!