This isn’t Formula 1 and there’s no wizardry and electronics at play, just a lot of willpower and pure engineering. The craziest thing about a Top Fuel’s over 10’000 HP engine is, all that power comes out of an engine developed 50 years ago. They deserve their own paragraph, you’ll see why. A dragster will reach over 460 kph before you have finished reading this sentence (at the time of writing, the current world record is 3.659 seconds, clocked by Brittany Force). That’s less time than it took you to think about it. Now think that a Top Fuel dragster will cover that same distance in 3.6 seconds. Think about how long you drove, and the time it took you to cover that distance. Get in your car, think of some plausible reason to break quarantine and drive 300 meters. To put that into perspective, if you put a Top Fuel dragster against a bullet train and give the train the advantage of a 300km/h rolling start, the dragster starting from still would cross the finish line first. Top Fuel dragsters accelerate faster than a fighter jet launched by a carrier’s catapult, going 0 to 160 in less than half a second and reaching 450 km/h in the first 200 meters of the race. After all, how can you not like the idea of a car with over 12 thousand horsepower capable of covering 305 meters (1000 ft, Top Fuels don’t the quarter mile anymore after Scott Kalitta’s fatal crash in 2008, video HERE) in less than 4 seconds, crossing the checkered flag at over 530km/h? 0 to 530kph in 300 meters. Since then I always grew an interest in Top Fuel dragsters and for the surrounding culture. Parts flying and cars in flames just as the light turned green, smoke and fire and the spectators cheering: I always felt a sort of guilty pleasure in watching those machines blow up like big, expensive firecrackers. What I remember the most from these cassettes filled to the brim with car crashes of all kinds and from all motorsport disciplines, were the ones from drag races. As a child, I once came back from the Bologna Motor show with two cassettes by Mondocorse in hand.
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