What Is a 1-Foot Rollout? 0–60 Times Explained

Where does the 1-foot rollout come from?

It comes straight from the drag strip. A car stages by rolling its front tyre into a pair of infrared beams at the start line. When the green light drops, the elapsed-time clock does not start — it starts only when the front tyre rolls clear of the stage beam, roughly a foot of travel depending on tyre diameter and how deep the driver staged. The driver's reaction time and that first foot of movement are simply never part of the ET.

This has been standard drag-racing practice for decades, and because American car magazines historically ran their acceleration tests at drag strips — or with equipment that mimics one — the convention leaked into 0–60 testing and then into manufacturers' own claims. It is also why acceleration timers, including PitLaunch, offer a 1-foot rollout start alongside a true standstill.

Why do manufacturers quote 0–60 with rollout?

Partly comparability, partly optics. Car and Driver and MotorTrend both subtract rollout from their published figures, so a manufacturer quoting a dead-stop number would look two or three tenths slower than every rival on the same page while the cars were actually identical. Once a few big players adopted the convention, everyone else had little choice. It is not a fiddle as long as it is stated — it is a different definition of when the run begins.

Europe complicates things. The traditional European benchmark is 0–100 km/h from a true standstill, with no rollout. Since 100 km/h is 62.1 mph — a slightly higher target speed — and there is no free foot, a European 0–100 km/h figure can trail the same car's American-style 0–60 time by 0.3–0.4 seconds without either number being wrong.

How much time is a 1-foot rollout worth?

For most cars, 0.2–0.3 seconds. What gets subtracted is the time the car takes to cover its first foot: a violent all-wheel-drive or EV launch clears it in about 0.2 seconds, while a gentler or traction-limited getaway spends closer to 0.3 seconds there. The car typically exits the rollout at 3–6 mph, so a rollout time is effectively a very short running start.

Concrete examples make the gap obvious:

• A sports EV quoted at 3.1 s with rollout is roughly a 3.3–3.4 s car from a dead stop.
• A hot hatch quoted at 6.0 s is realistically a 6.2–6.3 s car from a true standstill.
• Proportionally the effect is largest on quick cars — 0.3 s is nearly a tenth of the entire run on a 3-second car.

Why is my 0–60 slower than the manufacturer claims?

Rollout is the biggest single factor, but it is rarely the only one. Manufacturer and magazine numbers are set under conditions you will almost never replicate:

• Surface and weather — quoted times come from prepped, grippy tarmac in favourable temperatures; cold, dusty or damp surfaces cost tenths right where the run is won, at the launch.
• Launch technique — many headline figures depend on launch control executed perfectly, with warm tyres and a light fuel load.
• Speedometer error — UK and EU rules require a speedo never to under-read, so most over-read by a few percent; an indicated 60 mph is often a true 56–58 mph. Timing to a genuine GPS-measured 60 removes that flattery, so an honest measurement looks slower than a stopwatch run against the speedo.
• One-way runs — some published times are best one-directional efforts rather than two-way averages.

Which convention should you use?

Neither is more correct — they answer different questions, so pick the one that matches your comparison:

• Use 1-foot rollout when you are checking a manufacturer's claim or comparing against American magazine tests, so you measure like for like.
• Use true standstill when you want the honest from-rest figure, when comparing against European 0–100 km/h claims, or as your personal baseline for tracking a car over time.
• Whichever you choose, be consistent and say which you used when you share a time — a "3.9" means two different things under the two conventions.

How do you measure your own 0–60 accurately?

The benchmark hardware is a dedicated GPS performance box — a 10–25 Hz logger typically costing £100–£300. The modern alternative is a phone app that fuses GPS speed with the iPhone's accelerometer: with the phone mounted rigidly and a clear view of the sky, sensor fusion achieves comparable practical accuracy for road and track hobby use. Neither is a certified timing system — mounting quality, GPS signal and the surface you launch from all matter.

PitLaunch takes this approach and lets you choose true standstill or 1-foot rollout for every run, with automatic launch detection and times shown to the hundredth of a second alongside a ± confidence band, so you can see how trustworthy each individual run is.

One note on where to do this: acceleration testing belongs on a track, closed course or legal drag strip. Set everything up before you set off — launch detection means there is no reason to touch the phone on the move — or have a passenger operate it, and always obey local laws.

Frequently asked questions