Top Fuel Drag Racing Facts
* One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic-inch Hemi engine
makes more horsepower (8,000 HP) than the first 4 rows of cars at the Daytona 500.
* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes
11.2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747. (Note: This is incorrect) consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.
* A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce
enough power to merely drive the dragster's supercharger.
* With 3000 CFS of air being rammed in by the
supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.
* At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for
nitro methane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F.
* Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular
white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.
* Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug.
* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed
during a pass. After 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.
* If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.
* Dragsters reach over 300 MPH before you have
completed reading this sentence.
* In order to exceed 300 MPH in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4 G's. In order to reach 200 MPH well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8 G's.
* Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540
revolutions from light to light!
* Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.
* The redline is actually quite high at 9500 RPM.
* THE BOTTOM LINE: Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, & for once, NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000 per second.
0 to 100 MPH in .8 seconds (the first 60 feet of the run)
0 to 200 MPH in 2.2 seconds (the first 350 feet of the run) 6 g-forces at the starting line (nothing accelerates faster on land)
6 negative g-forces upon deployment of twin ‘chutes at 300 MPH
An NHRA Top Fuel Dragster accelerates quicker than any other land vehicle on earth quicker than a jet fighter plane . . . quicker than the space shuttle.