Top Fuel Drag Racing

f you've never experienced Top Fuel funny cars or dragsters, you're missing something amazing. On a track a mere 1,000 feet long, the cars hit a top speed of 300 mph in four seconds. When they leave the starting line, the roar of their engines is deafening and the deep vibration they produce can be felt all thru your body. The engines have a lifespan of about 10 minutes and are completely rebuilt between every race.

Here are some interesting facts:

A Top Fuel dragster reaches 300 mph before you can finish reading this sentence.

To reach that speed, the launch acceleration is nearly 8 g's, then fades to merely 4 g's at the halfway point.

A dragster's 500 cubic-inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first four rows of cars at Daytona.

A supercharger rams air into the engine at 3000 cfm. The pistons compress the air/fuel mixture into a near-solid form. At full throttle the cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock.

A Dodge V-8 engine can't produce enough horsepower to turn the dragster's supercharger.

With a redline as high as 9500 rpm, Top Fuel engines only turn 540 revolutions from start to finish.

Dual magnetos supply 44 amps (the same output as an arc welder) to each spark plug. Electrodes can be totally consumed during a single pass. If a spark plug fails early in the run, un-burned nitro in the cylinder can explode with enough force to blow the cylinder head off or split the steel block in half.

To put all that into perspective, if a twin-turbo Corvette crosses the starting line at 200 mph and a Top Fuel dragster launches at the exact same moment, the dragster catches up to the Corvette in three seconds and in just one more second reaches 300 mph for the win.

Click on the pics to see short examples of brute force and turn up the volume.