Beaver Springs dragstrip day

[Cuba]

I went to my first drag day on Saturday at Beaver Springs, PA although I didn't race. It was a nice hour long ride to get there, immediately rained once we arrived, but cleared up soon after that. It's a small strip, 2 lanes, 1/4 mile, nothing special but it was fun. We saw lots of classics- some pulling 10 o clock wheelies at launch, a custom hot rod that broke into the 8's, about 10 90's Impalas (including 2 station wagons) racing each other (slowly), a top fuel drag car that broke before its run, a turbo Busa with backfiring issues, 1100 ninja, another Busa, several other bikes around, 2 newer M3's that couldn't launch, a turbo neon that looked like he was getting groceries, and another Impala not in the same group that blew up at the end of the day.

My friend had 2 bad launches, not enough rpms or too much clutch I'm not really sure, and on his third he does a nice burnout, gets a mid 11 sec time, comes back to stage, and realizes his rear tire ingested a 1" piece of shrapnel during the burnout and he did his run on a flat tire, at 130mph. Pretty lucky, it was his best time of the day too. We patched it up and rode home, plug came out after a few wheelies and repatched, made it the rest of the way just fine. He's a track guy so not very experienced dragging bikes and I've never done it. Any pointers for me? I plan to do some runs next time, it's $37 for an unlimited day pass. I've heard 8K rpms and feather the clutch but what EXACTLY does that involve/feel like?