What the software does is to disable the ignition system immediately upon detection of a signal and prevent the engine from going over 4,000 rpm. It also lights a red LED light on the ignition itself. The only way that the ignition can be restored and the light to be turned off is for an NHRA official to punch a code number into the ignition. And only NHRA will have the number.

Photo by Zach Hawthorne

Currently MSD has installed the copyrighted software into a few their Digital-7 Programmable (PN7530) Pro Stock style ignitions and changed the part number to 7530T. They've done extensive dyno testing of that unit on their in-house test engines just to ensure that the unit functions as it should as an ignition. To test the traction control software they have to put the 7530T system on a car with a traction control

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device installed. They chose a trio of NHRA Pro Stockers --V. Gaines, Barry Grant, and Mike Edwards -- that were testing at Phoenix. After getting a baseline, the first car to successfully test the device was Mike Edwards, and it ended up working perfectly according to MSD's Pando.

"Mike launched the car, the tires started spinning, the traction control device did its job and the MSD system sensed that and restricted the engine to a max of 4000 rpm," Pando reported. "We brought the car back to the pits. The LED light on the unit was on. We attempted to wing the throttle and the engine wouldn't rpm above 4,000 rpm. The NHRA official then put in the code to clear the device and the ignition then worked perfectly. The test was a complete success."

DRO has been told off the record that once the MSD unit has proven it will work as designed, you can look for MSD ignitions with their copyrighted traction control detection software to be mandatory in many IHRA and NHRA classes where capacitive-type ignitions are the ignition of choice, the first being the Pro Stock classes.

The one sure thing is that the NHRA, IHRA and other sanctioning bodies and their racers are completely fed up with the traction control issue and will welcome any solution that will solve the issue of cheating and traction control.