Tire Shake 101 – A Video Tutorial of Weak Shake vs Aggressive Shake

For those who don’t know, tireshake in a drag car can be one of the most punishing experiences short of an outright crash in all of motorsports. There have been several recorded instances of drivers having fillings knocked out of their teeth during tireshake, and it is believed that extreme tireshake was a factor in the death of Nitro Funny Car driver Eric Medlen. In Medlen’s case, the shake was caused by a tire failure at speed, which is a less common occurrence than shake near the starting line, which is what noted Alcohol Funny Car tuner Will Hanna is discussing in the video below.

I’m not going to try to dissect Hanna’s information and break it down farther, as that’s far beyond my level of expertise on the subject. I certainly understand the phenomenon itself, but diagnosing the cause and the different types is well outside my area of expertise. I can tell you I experienced very brief and comparatively mild tireshake on a few occasions and it is absolutely ridiculous the amount of force I encountered.

In my late teens and early 20’s, I ran a bracket dragster that, for the most part, was a smooth as silk. However, there were a few occasions where the car would shake at the end of the burnout if I held my foot in the gas too long and the tires began to hook while still under power. The first time it happened was very early in my driving career and I had no idea what happened, but the shaking literally blurred my vision briefly, until I pulled my foot off the throttle and the tires settled down. I learned quickly I never wanted that to happen again, and it didn’t until I got a new car with a different style of suspension on the rear end. The new car would bite sooner than the old one, so I had to revamp my burnout routine after the first couple of burnouts ended in more shake and more blurred vision.

Hopefully any of you out there looking to further your understanding of tireshake find this video useful and can work toward preventing the phenomenon in your race program. Hanna is a well-respected tuner in the A/FC world and certainly knows what he’s talking about.