Quarter Mile & 0–60 Estimator
Quarter-mile ET and trap speed from power and weight by the Hale, Fox and Huntington drag-strip formulas (empirical), a 0–60 floor, or hp from a time slip.
Elapsed time and trap speed in mph and km/h by the formula you pick with the other two beside it, the 0–60 mph and 0–100 km/h constant-power floor, lb per hp, hp per ton, and in reverse the wheel and crank horsepower a time slip implies.
Example: 400 crank hp with 15 % drivetrain loss (340 whp) and 3 500 lb: Hale gives 12.67 s at 107.6 mph, Fox 13.68 s at 103.0; the 0–60 constant-power floor is 2.25 s — real launches add 1–2 s.
Three empirical curves,
clearly labelled.
Where the drag-strip formulas come from, how the reverse works, and what the 0–60 figure is and is not.
The formulas
The quarter-mile estimates are curve fits, not physics: Hale (ET = 5.825·(W/P)^⅓, trap = 234·(P/W)^⅓), Fox (6.290 and 224 with the same cube root) and Huntington (6.269 and 230 with an exponent of 0.3), all with W in pounds including the driver and P in horsepower at the wheels. They were fitted to time slips of well-launched cars decades ago and remain the standard rules of thumb; the table shows all three because they disagree by up to a second. Crank power is reduced by the drivetrain loss you enter before use.
Working backwards
Solving each formula for P gives the wheel power a measured run implies: P = W ÷ (ET/a)^(1/k) from the elapsed time, or P = W·(trap/b)^(1/k) from the trap speed. Trap speed is the more honest measure of power, since it depends little on the launch; ET rewards traction and driver skill as much as horsepower.
0–60 mph
The 0–60 figure is the constant-power floor t = m·v² ÷ (2P): the time to reach 60 mph if all the wheel power could be applied from the first instant, which tyres and gearing never allow. It is a "cannot be faster than" number — real two-wheel-drive launches take one to two seconds longer, and it says nothing about wheelspin, shift times or aerodynamics. Nothing leaves the browser; the same four anonymous usage counts as the rest of the site apply.
SOURCES
- Hale ET = 5.825·(W/P)^⅓, trap = 234·(P/W)^⅓; Fox 6.290 / 224 with ⅓; Huntington 6.269 / 230 with 0.3 (W lb, P wheel hp) — empirical fits, labelled as such; 0–60 floor t = m·v² ÷ 2P
Last reviewed 22 September 2026. How results are checked: How we verify.