Mind-blowing facts
A friend shared some info with me this week I feel like passing along. If you’re not a drag racing fan … hang on, you’re reading this, so there’s a very good chance you have at very least a grudging appreciation of drag racing. Or you’re one of my long-suffering editors, for whom a good launch means a book release, or a space shot. But I digress. These facts are attributed to racing legend Doug Kalitta. I did find a couple of other examples of this list in my research, but none that definitively confirmed Kalitta’s authorship — or, for that matter, the accuracy of the “facts” as presented.
Does that mean we shall ignore them and move on? Heck no. Factchecking is for the news pages. This is about fun, and they ring true enough to enjoy in that light. That said …
• One Top Fuel dragster outfitted with a 500 cubic-inch replica Dodge (actually Keith Black, etc.) Hemi engine makes more horsepower (8,000 HP) than the first 4 rows of cars at NASCAR's Daytona 500.
That sounds about right. I know top fuel figures are now pushing 10,000 hp, a number itself so huge as to be unbelievable. Then again, guys are building street machines with 1,000 horses and more, so the limits seem to have been removed.
• Under full throttle, a dragster engine will consume 11.2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded Boeing 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate but with 25 per cent less energy being produced.
Let’s say a lousy run is four seconds, so 44.8 gallons of fuel over the quarter-mile, so 179.2 gallons per mile. Yeah, I’m not complaining about the mileage in my little SUV ever again.
• Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapour by the searing exhaust gases.
So hot it’s burning the hydrogen out of the humidity. Just think about that for a second.
• Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. Which is typically the output of an electric arc welder in each cylinder.
It’s not the facts that are surprising, it’s the fact the car can run at all, really. These next two are my favourites.
• Dragsters reach over 300 mph … before you have completed reading this sentence.
• Top Fuel engines turn only approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!
That second one is even more astounding when you think that the pass is made close to the redline at 9,500 rpm — which is pretty high for a V-8. So at 9,500 rpm, the engine turns just 540 times to make its run. Or blows into a million pieces.