First time drag racer needs advice

[Frankenstang65]

Next sat. April 6th, will be my first time running my car down the 1/4 mile. Since this is a totally new experience for me, if figured it would be wise to tap some of the knowledge of you veterans before lining up.

My first question deals with pre-race preparation. Is there any kind of mental checklist you guys go through before heading off to the track? Any tricks on squeezing every last pony out of your engine? I've got the timing set as adavanced as I can go ( only 9 degrees 'cause I've got a lot of compression) without detonating. I think I have the carb tuned ok, but I'm not all that good with holleys. What else am I missing? I plan on bumping the timing up a little more and running a few gallons of race gas, but I'm not sure how much difference this will make. What about gutting the interior? Is it worth the trouble?

The second question has to deal with racing techinique (this is mostly for you guys with automatics out there). I can't decide how I want to shift the car. I've got 3.00 gears and an open real end to work with, making traction a real problem. Everyone tells me just to shift it 1-2-3...but I've been practicing that and my car goes nowhere in first gear, no matter how carefull I'm with the pedal, I end up spinning all the way through to second gear. On the street I usually launch in third and then down shift into second at 2000-2300. That keeps my wheel mostly hooked up, and uses second in the midrange, where most of my power is. When I do this I can hold second to 70 or so, and I'll hit third with enough rpms to keep the power from dropping off. What do you guys think? Would this work on the track? I was told not to worry as much about traction, and just shift 1-2-3, because the track will hook much better than the street. Is this true? I'm interested to hear what kinds of strategies you use.

Also, just for for fun, any estimates on what I'll run? All my mods are in the sig (except that I didn't mention I have ported 289 heads, I just wrote ported. That explains the compression, and makes a little bit of a difference)

Sorry so long/ so many questions, but I want to do the best I can, plus I know that this is an area that almost all of you have expereince with.

Any advice or insight would be very usefull...thanks in advance