I was talking to a guy with an Mercedes W211 E55 that I'd done a TCU tune for. He used his car on the dragstrip and was often having traction issues off the line. He had noticed that when he tried to launch in 2nd gear (by selecting "C" same as our "W" mode), he got better traction but, it wouldn't hold in 2nd and would change up too soon. I'm not a drag racing expert, and I have to roll my car off the line to get a decent time (otherwise there's just no traction). I don't want to buy another set of rear wheels (fitted with drag radials) for occasional use. Would there be any merit in making a drag strip specific TCU tune?

For example, I could replace the existing "W" mode with:

• Start in 2nd gear and move all the WOT changes up to the TCU limiter
• Prevent any kickdown (don't want it going back to 1st)
• Unlock the converter for the 2nd gear start (and leave it unlocked a bit longer) to reduce the effects of the higher gear start.

Any suggestions, or do you think I should just buy some drag radials?

BTW, I'm currently running a 3.27 ratio wavetrac diff. with 285/30 R20 rear tyres. The last time I ran, the best I could do was a flat 12.0s, but with a 125mph ET. I've increased the power significantly since then, so I expect that the traction issues will only be worse.