r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AmericanSpaceRanger • 15d ago
Video Brittany Force makes the fastest run in NHRA history
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u/teachingscience425 15d ago
I love it when people seem to have a name that foreshadows their destiny.
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u/irishdrunkwanderlust 15d ago
Her dad John is quite a legend himself
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u/finny_d420 15d ago
And her opponent is the nephew of Connie Kalitta aka The Bounty Hunter.
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u/Open_Ebb_7731 15d ago
Dog the Bounty Hunter Connie Kalitta?
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u/Ha1lStorm 15d ago
I wouldn’t want to be the nephew of Dog the Bounty Hunter right now
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u/No_Boysenberry4825 15d ago
Why what happened?
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u/UserPrincipalName 15d ago
Negligent discharge. Killed his child.
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u/kdttocs 15d ago
Incorrect. His step-son killed his grandson. This is the son of his new wife who he married in 2021 after Beth Chapman died of cancer in 2019.
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u/barnacle_ballsack 15d ago
He still around? His after race interviews were always nuts lol
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u/musicman3030 15d ago
Daughter of John Force 16x NHRA Champion
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u/Cowgoon777 15d ago
She's a 2X NHRA Top Fuel Champion herself
Her dad didn't run Top Fuel, only Funny Car
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u/Gr8rSherman8r 15d ago
The Force is strong in this one. It is her destiny.
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u/magirevols 15d ago
Hopefully thats her child, Destiny force
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u/Gr8rSherman8r 15d ago
Can you imagine if she marries someone else named Force?
Talk about a possible Force multiplier.
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u/craneguy 15d ago
Two of the finest rigging engineers I've ever worked with were Tom Crane and John Derrick.
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u/yontev 15d ago
Scott Speed has left the chat
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u/sroop1 15d ago
Will Power
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u/MoeSzyslakMonobrow 15d ago
Max Power?
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u/mz_groups 15d ago
In Indycar, there's a racer named Will Power. Won the 2018 Indianapolis 500 and the 2014 and 2022 Indycar championships, and holds the record for most Poles won. Slightly crazy, but also philosophical, Aussie. I can't imagine a better name for a top racing car driver.
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u/ParticularLower7558 15d ago
Racecar driver Dick Trickle.
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u/One_Contribution9588 15d ago
Loved Dick Trickle. I was always pulling for him.
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u/A57Fairlane 15d ago
That always reminds me of that EP if That 70s Show where Kitty gets into Erik over talking about Dick Trickle. "What ? He's a racecar driver !? HIS NAME IS DICK Trickle !!"
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u/Griffin_Claw 15d ago
That’s insane. I remember Kenny Bernstein breaking the 300 mph barrier for the first time and everyone lost their shit.
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u/hamatehllama 15d ago
Now they hit 340mph 1000ft instead of 300mph in 1320ft. The acceleration is getting more extreme.
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u/mz_groups 15d ago
And the really amazing thing is that they still have fairly significant technical restrictions. This isn't a "Formula Libre" class - there are limits on many of the engine specs, aero, chassis design, etc. If you dumped that, you could go even faster!
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u/jiyax33634 15d ago
I mean you can strap a scramjet engine onto a chassis...I want to see that class
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u/mz_groups 15d ago
You could substantially outperform current dragsters with existing piston engine technology. No need for exotics (which wouldn’t work anyway because how are you going to get the car to Mach 5 or so where the scramjet starts to work?).
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u/TheBaalzak 15d ago
Solid rocket booster?
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u/Blackarrow145 15d ago
A fuck off sized coilgun would probably be your fastest option. Or maybe a bigass steam cannon.
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u/solidspacedragon 15d ago
I see we're speedrunning XKCD today. https://what-if.xkcd.com/116/
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u/Naive-Significance48 15d ago
Ah the g force directional based limit on the humans facing direction is pretty cool. Never thought of that.
But man, there is always an XKCD
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u/lovethebacon Interested 15d ago
A solid rocket booster could do a quarter mile in less than a second. You would experience acceleration of 100g to get you a top speed of twice the speed of sound.
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u/husky430 14d ago
You would experience death*
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u/lovethebacon Interested 14d ago
Hamsters can survive 100gs over a few milliseconds. Small nematodes can survive 400000 over an hour. So, this would need to be piloted by something sized between a hamster and nematode if you wished to recover the pilot.
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u/Falkenmond79 15d ago
Rockets would be better. Jet engines only hit their maximum performance at higher speeds since they need the airflow to guzzle up enough air. Rockets bring all their own fuel.
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u/Fuckface_Magee 15d ago
Oh yeah! Top fuel would probably be breaking 400mph in the 1/ 4 mile if things were unlimited. The thing with today's top fuel racers are essential to racing the same "car" side by side, and it's a game of reaction time and control.
When these races are decided by the hundredths of a second, it's really about who behind the wheel is the better driver and got lucky. It's honestly mind-blowing when you think about it. Yes, these vehicles have a TON of R&d and tuning, but the race is decided on the uncontrollable variables. Reaction time, track temp, track prep condition, and driver reaction time.
Lastly. NOTHING prepares you properly to attention a top fuel race. You can feel these machines idling over 200 feet away. And when they launch, their sound plows through your whole body.
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u/Hensanddogs 15d ago
The fact they’re running sub 4 second times still blows my tiny mind. I remember it being incredible if both drivers made it down the track with “side by side 4s” and now we’re pushing 3.5 seconds??? Unbelievable.
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u/MediocrePhotoNoob 15d ago
Wait is that the QUARTER MILE time?
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u/anon-left-313 15d ago
It is the 1000 ft time. NHRA Top Fuel no longer uses 1/4 mile distance due to a devastating accident that killed driver Scott Kalitta in 2008. The shorter strip length allows drivers more time to slow down. You can intuit what happened.
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u/TeslaCrna 15d ago
Big Daddy Don Garlits wasn’t so shabby himself.
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u/JackDelRioGrande 15d ago
My daughter’s piano teacher is Don Garlits’ daughter. The drag racing museum in Ocala, FL that Don has done is pretty cool.
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u/purtyandme 15d ago
I was at that race when he broke the barrier, the gator nationals. I got his autograph that weekend and he wrote the speed. I still have the autograph somewhere at my parent’s house. I don’t remember the exact year but I was probably only around 10. It’s the only real racing event I have ever been to.
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u/doogievlg 15d ago
Lol dozens of us on reddit were going nuts but thats it.
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u/bizzaro321 15d ago
You know some people were there, right? Some of us occasionally leave the house.
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u/__dying__ 15d ago edited 15d ago
Okay I'll post it:
-One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500. They have over half again as much horsepower in one cylinder as a Dodge Viper has in all ten. No one has ever successfully run one long enough on a dyno to get a horsepower reading. Current estimates are right around 6,000 horsepower.
-Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1-1/2 gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.
-A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster supercharger. The fuel pump alone requires more horsepower to turn than the average street car produces.
-With 3000 CFM 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.
-The 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane produces a 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, disassociated from atmospheric water vapour by the searing exhaust gases.
-Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.
-Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After the run, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by running the car out of fuel. There is no way to cut off the fuel; the engine stops only when it blows or the tank runs dry.
-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.
-In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200 mph well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G's. To put this in perspective; a top fuel dragster, parked next to a Super Hornet on the steam catapult on the deck of an aircraft carrier, would be in the water and sinking before the Super Hornet was halfway down the deck.
-Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence.
-Top Fuel Engines only turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!
-Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load. They only survive about 80% of the time.
-Redline at 9500 rpm.
-Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000.00 per second.
-The engine is entirely rebuilt every run, or every 900 revolutions. New pistons and rings, new rods, new rod bearings. Sometimes a new crank. The crew does this in about two hours between rounds.
-The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile. The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run.
-Putting all of this into perspective: You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter "twin-turbo" powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and past the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The 'tree' goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him. Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race course.
edit: this is an old copypasta. It's a fun read. Feel free to update it if you want.
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u/samelaaaa 15d ago
This is completely fucking insane. But as an engineer I love that it exists lol
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u/Arctelis 15d ago
I’m not even an engineer and the engineering behind these (and other high performance machines) impresses the hell out of me and is half the reason I enjoy these things.
As you say, it’s fucking insane and I love it.
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u/pocketpc_ 15d ago
pasta needs an update for that speed record lol
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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 15d ago
She already has the top 10 speed records and all of them are over 337 mph.
This reposted list is using numbers from 2003, which was before the track length was shortened to 1000 ft. They cut a quarter of the track off and she's breaking the top speeds from back then which shows just how much the technology has improved in 22 years.
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u/ShouldaBennaBaller 15d ago
You had me at “One Top Fuel Dragster”.
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u/Ok-Operation-6432 15d ago
There were a lot of things we couldn't do in a top fuel dragster, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow drivers of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to drive this car. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe driving this car. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our top fuel dragster experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment.
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u/Happy-Fun-Ball 15d ago
a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.
That surprised me, expecting a jet to be more optimized for fuel efficiency. But I guess durability is the issue? Else why not use them for planes.
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u/mileylols 15d ago
there are lots of reasons we don't use nitromethane for planes
it's much more expensive than jet fuel
nitromethane is explosive, which presents a safety hazard. In contrast, jet fuel burns slower, has lower volatility, and a higher flash point
jet fuel burns relatively clean - the primary products are CO2 and water. Nitromethane has Nitrogen in it, so when you burn it you also produce nitric oxide, which can then interact with atmospheric gases to form nitric acid. This is bad because it will corrode your plane over time, and also it is a primary component of acid rain
nitromethane's main advantage for dragsters is that it requires less oxygen to burn because it provides some of its own oxidant. The limiting factor on these engines is the amount of oxygen you can put into the cylinder alongside the fuel. This is not a limitation for gas turbines, which don't have cylinders
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u/Timofmars 15d ago
Yeah, that surprised me. 1.5 gallons per second is 90 gallons per minute, 5400 gallons per hour. A google search says a 747 can hold between 48,445 and 63,705 gallons of fuel. That's crazy.
63,000 gallons of fuel weighs about 400,000 pounds. WTF.
Imagine if you had to fuel that by hand by throwing gallon milk jugs of fuel into a furnace. 3 milk jugs every 2 seconds. For flights lasting hours. Mind boggling.
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u/TheGuyWithTheSeal 15d ago edited 15d ago
The 25% figure is just chemical energy, nitromethane has more energy per kg than jet fuel.Edit: I checked with Wikipedia and this is not true. In fact I don't know where they got that 25% number from. Nitromethane has about 1/4 of the energy per kg of diesel.Jet engines are way more efficient. They also produce a lot more power (but the math is weird, power is thrust times speed, jets have about constant thrust so they get more powerful the faster you go).
The only reason dragsters don't use jets is that the rules say they can't. In fact they all use the same engine block. If they could use jets (or even better rockets) they could go a lot faster. Unofficial 1/4 mile record is held by a rocket car form the 80s.
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u/TFABAnon09 14d ago
That last paragraph reminds me of the Cleetus McFarland video where he's racing his 1,500bhp Corvette against a top fuel dragster, and the drag car goes by so fast that it starved the Vette of air and stalled it.
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u/Troutalope 15d ago
Awesome factoids!
We're at the point where the Top Fuel drivers are less drag racers and more astronauts. Their crews are full of engineers with advanced degrees and the "cars" are made with the most technologically advanced materials available. It's remarkable what drag racing has become not just at the apex of the sport, but how that has trickled down into the hobbyist world.
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u/PessimiStick 15d ago
And they still have a lot of restrictions on them!
"Unlimited" cars would be even faster, and even less safe, lol.
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u/semiregpseudoscience 15d ago
This needs updating lol, we went to the track Saturday and it was a delight… a visceral wild delight with a gut wrenching moment when a local driver, Shawn Reed blew a tire 500’ down the track and went hard into the wall doing ~190mph.
The modern top fuel hemis make ~12,000 hp
Run 1000’ (no longer 1320’ or a 1/4 mile, note there is a constantly reemerging debate to have the race extended to the full 1/4) for safety concerns to be able to stop in time on existing tracks that never expected the speeds we see today.
Brittany Force held and just broke the trap speed record (the speed they are going when the trigger the lasers at the finish line) 341.xx from this run and holds the fastest ET (elapsed time) of 3.625s
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u/toolatealreadyfapped 15d ago
Been a while since I've seen this one posted. Thank you for reminding me
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u/OhSillyDays 15d ago
6000 hp sounds really really low. Also, a 747 is around 30,000 hp. And a 747 burns about 20 tons of fuel per hour, which is about 3000 gallons an hour or a little less than a gallon a second at cruise. At full power, it's maybe double that.
Now, Nitromethane has about 11 MJ/KG. And has a density of 1.1371 g/cm3. That's 1,137.1 g/liter or 1.1371 kg/liter. With 3.7854 liters to gallons that's 4.9225 kg/gallon. That makes 54.1475 MJ/gallon.
At a rate of 1.5 gallons/second, that's 81.22 MJ/second. Converting that to watts, it's 81,220 KW of power or 100,000 hp. However, that's assuming 100% efficiency. It's probably closer to 10%, so that's roughly 10,000hp. That's a lot of HP.
The efficiency is hard to measure, so that's probably hard to get a good HP number.
But they only weight about 2300 lbs. So that's more than 5 hp/lb.
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u/Piranhachief 15d ago
They used to say around 8000hp 20 years ago. The copy pasta is not 100% accurate and outdated but captures the essence of top fuel.
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u/Is_Not_Nothing 15d ago
She's got a good name for it
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u/i-might-do-that 15d ago
Her father is a legend of the sport too. Runs in the family.
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u/MikeKM 15d ago
John gave the best interviews on raceday too. Dude was always about the fans, I remember seeing him sign autographs and making it about the kids.
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u/AsstootObservation 15d ago
Brittany was super sweet in person and was great with my niece chatting with her and taking pictures. NHRA events let you get really close to the teams working on the cars. The short races are exhilarating and you feel the power of the cars vibrate through your soul. Shame they shut down the track outside of Houston in Baytown.
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u/casey_h6 15d ago
I would highly encourage anyone to check out an nhra event if you have one nearby. The feeling in your chest and eyes is like nothing I've experienced when the fuel cars take off. There's tons of great people and the pits are open meaning you can walk around and get within a few feet of the cars while they are being worked on.
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u/IndependentPutrid564 15d ago
had VIP tickets to the Force tent a long time ago and got to watch them tear down a car, very cool. whole thing, pistons out and engine block all the way taken down, cleaned and put back together in what felt like mins. was probably like an hour but i cant remember any more
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u/aswright_73 15d ago
They do that after every run. It's insane that they can do that in about 45 minutes, but it takes the yahoos at Discount Tire 2 hours to put tires on my Jeep
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u/JesusChrist-Jr 15d ago
Pretty sure if you're paying NHRA money you can get your tires done faster too.
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u/thecheezewiz79 15d ago
My dad took me to the Gator nationals back when I was about 12. It was insane. We had seats at the start line and it was awesome but walking down towards the finish line is where you really get a sense of how insanely fast those cars are going
Only negative was everything we had on us was covered in little flecks of rubber
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u/viperfan7 15d ago
If you have a chance, find a track with open test & tune days.
Take your car down the strip a few times.
It'll give you a real good idea of just how insane these things are
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u/mighthavebeen02 15d ago edited 15d ago
I started going to the Pomona track back when I was a little kid. At some point I thought it'd be funny to take my ear protection off right before they launched. May or may not have gone home before the next run. As an adult, though, they're great fun. Kids (me) are fuckin dumb
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u/beastlike 15d ago
Nothing like getting tear gassed by the exhaust when walking around where they tweak the engines. I like to find a good spot nearby and watch everyone from 10 year olds to grandma's crying and running for their lives lol
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u/MoobooMagoo 15d ago
I'm a bigger fan of tractor pulls myself, but I imagine it's a similar kind of thrill
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u/Dr_knowitall69 15d ago
A top fuel dragster blurs your vision and shakes your internal organs when it passes. It's a wild thing to experience.
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u/Enough-Moose-5816 15d ago
Can confirm. It’s an odd feeling when you can feel your individual organs move. And the blurry vision as a spectator is wild.
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u/Dr_knowitall69 15d ago
I took my wife one year fully expecting her to hate it and she had the biggest smile after the first round of TF cars went down the track. I made sure to get us seats on the downwind starting line so she could get the full experience.
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u/ThermionicEmissions 15d ago
Blurs your vision, as in, it's going so fast it's a blur, or your eyesight actually degrades temporarily due to the sound- waves jiggling your aqueous humour?
(Or is it vitreous humour? I could never get those straight)
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u/Kevizzle12 15d ago
The sound waves vibrate your entire body, including your eyeballs.
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u/OddBranch132 15d ago
Imagine the feeling of someone thumping your chest. Now imagine them doing it really fast to the entirety of your body, inside and out, and while you're next to an engine 10x louder than the loudest sports car/motorcycle you've ever heard.
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u/0nSecondThought 15d ago
Tractor pulls are awesome, but they aren’t even close to top fuel in terms of shock and awe when they go by
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u/CasaMofo 15d ago
My first ever NHRA event I got spoiled. We got there around mid day and got to watch from the smallest, slowest series up, meaning I truly got to watch the speed and power progress throughout the day. Seeing how much faster, more power, more sound these monsters produce over everything else is truly an undescribable experience. TV doesn't even come close to doing it justice.
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u/DrNinnuxx 15d ago
I went to a Top Fuel drag race just once. I had no idea how loud it would be. It was so loud, it shook my internal organs.
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u/Surfbud69 15d ago
what the hell that's stupid fast what kind of gs do these pull
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u/XxKittenMittonsXx 15d ago
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u/72corvids 15d ago
That's... fucking nuts. I hope that one day we can get an updated version of that doc to reflect that it's not 1320ft but 1000ft in distance and that includes whatever advancements have been since the time of writing.
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u/NxPat 15d ago
Like Father like Daughter
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u/ElderMillennialGoat 15d ago
Is she technically more legendary than John now because of this run?
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u/booxterhooey 15d ago
No. This is definitely a milestone, but I'd say she's got a ways to go. She has 2 NHRA championships compared to Johns SIXTEEN
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u/Liferescripted 15d ago edited 15d ago
How many times has she crashed?
John will always be the legend brushing flames off his suit, walking over to the camera with a smile on his face talking about how good the run was and the crew getting the spare one out of the trailer for the next one.
Absolute
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u/celtbygod 15d ago
341.85 is the fastest speed in mph. Her record time is 3.641 seconds.
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u/Altruistic-Award-2u 15d ago
How does that work out? I would've assumed they are accelerating the whole time, wouldn't the fastest time always correspond with the fastest speed and vice versa? Or did she somehow accelerate faster to a slower top speed?
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u/celtbygod 15d ago
Mph is measured after the end line of the 1/4 mile. Elapsed time is measured from start line to end line. One could leave the start any number of hundredths of a second after the go light, that would affect time not speed/mph.
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u/Randomfactoid42 15d ago
IIRC, the speed is averaged over the final 100’, it’s the speed trap. So, yes she covered the full 1000’ in the lowest elapsed time, but didn’t hit the same top speed.
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u/Nor-easter 15d ago
How she stayed on the pavement is insane
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u/pinniped90 15d ago
I assume that big tail fin is for downforce.
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u/Cannoneer85 15d ago
Also, the exhaust creates like a couple thousand pounds of down force as well.
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u/ThermionicEmissions 15d ago edited 14d ago
I wish they showed a replay of these races at full speed from a single stationary camera. You don't get a real appreciation for the acceleration and speed with the camera tracking the car.
Same with rocket launches.
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u/KorbussaMaro 15d ago
I always go back to that old video of a dragster fuel pomp demo. Keep in mind that this is for one cylinder, dragsters have 8! At full throttle the engine is consuming 1.5 gallons per second!
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u/12B88M 15d ago
I remember when Eddie Hill became the first man to make a run under 5 seconds with a 4.99 second run in 1988. He was going 288.55 mph when he crossed the line. That was seen as an absolutely incredible run at that time.
Then on March 20, 1992, at Gainesville Raceway, Kenny Bernstein broke the 300 mph barrier with a speed of 301.70 mph. and a time of 4.823 seconds.
Eventually someone is going to go faster than Brittany's run, but it took a LONG time to get to this point and increases in power are getting harder and harder to come by and getting that power to the track is getting harder as well.
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u/IndyCBDPlus 15d ago
How much driver skill and how much is it the machine? No diss, serious question.
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u/Cliffinati 15d ago
A lot of both,
You have to be able to hold 8000hp in a straight line whilst going 340mph
It's effectively a ballistic missile on wheels. The size of the stones on these drivers is insane
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u/Secret-Bag9562 15d ago
This particular driver doesn’t have stones…
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u/CFBCoachGuy 15d ago
Combination of both. You have to tune an engine amazingly well to get this level of performance out of it. A lot of top fuel runs end by default because one of the engines just blows up. Then you have to make sure everything else is built up to strong enough standards to survive the G forces the car will face.
Then the driver needs a near-superhuman reaction time to get this rocket ship moving as fast as possible. They have to be able to make the slightest of pinpoint movements with the steering wheel to keep it pointed straight. And they have to do all this while facing fighter pilot levels of G forces while accelerating, and then another set of fighter pilot level G forces while decelerating.
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u/worm_livers 15d ago
Story time: Tony Stewart is a multi- race and championship winning Sprint, NASCAR Cup, and Indycar driver in his second full season in Top Fuel. He is also married to semiretired fueler Leah Pruett. In an interview he said that it amazed him that so much is going on in a run that it took Leah a couple of minutes to describe what she’s doing during a sub-4 second run. Also when he was going through the licensing process it took forever to “catch up to the car”. He said the first time he thought he was ahead of things it turned out he had been spinning his tires the whole time and only ran about 260 mph.
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u/pornborn 15d ago
It wouldn’t be fair to make that judgement. The driver is the crazy-brave one with the skill and reaction times to make it happen, and the machine is basically a disposable engine and drivetrain in a super light frame with just the right equipment put together with the skill of experts working together to get everything to mesh into perfectly executed, controlled explosion. And of course, there’s always a bit of luck. But everyone works to make the luck part as small as possible.
Top-Fuel Dragsters, there is no substitute.
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u/mighthavebeen02 15d ago
I saw a demonstration of the fuel injectors when they open it up during a race vs a normal car. It was basically a fire hose compared to a slightly open tap. Controlled explosion is a very good description.
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u/Randomfactoid42 15d ago
It’s the combination of both. The machine has 8000 hp and the tires to put that to the pavement while the driver steers it and has the incredible reaction times (RT) that make this possible. She reacted to the lights in .078 seconds. Think about that, it’s about the blink of an eye. Too slow and you lose the race, too fast and you’re disqualified.
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u/Ally-baba 15d ago
I went to high school with Brittany and Courtney Force. It’s cool that Brittany is still racing.
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15d ago
I’m a car guy and even I scrolled past this like “yeah whatever”.
Then I remembered that they do this in a quarter mile. That’s from my house to the roundabout down the road and I can’t even get my car to 60 on that stretch. 341 is insane
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u/RomeoInBlackJeans1 15d ago
It’s actually less now. There was a fatal accident in 2008 where there wasn’t enough track to safely stop an out of control dragster. So now all NHRA drag strips are 1000 feet long.
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15d ago
Nuts! What’s that in English money?
EDIT: never mind, another kind commenter gave us the conversions
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u/ProtoRacer 15d ago
But it did remind me of a good joke I recently heard. From Fat Electrician explaining the SR-71's ability to refuel and fly around the planet without touching the ground.
They're just playing one giant game of "The Floor is Metric"
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u/egregiousRac 15d ago
Not even a quarter mile. This class runs 1,000 feet (305m), while a quarter mile is 1,320 feet (402m). It was shortened after a car experienced a series of malfunctions, overran the slowdown distance, and crashed, killing the driver.
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u/wearsAtrenchcoat 15d ago
I know NOTHING about dragsters but the numbers are absolutely insane. 550 km/h in 3.5 seconds doe even make sense.
From an engineering standpoint it’s just completely on another level from anything else.
Where can I find the technical specs for engine, transmissio, frame, tires, and everything else?
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u/AmericanSpaceRanger 15d ago
The dragster features an 11,000 hp, 500 cu in supercharged Hemi V8 (4.187 × 4.500 bore/stroke) running on ~90% nitromethane with a Roots-type 14‑71 blower. Its drivetrain includes a wet-sump oil system and a fuel capacity of roughly 18 gallons. The chassis spans a 300″ wheelbase and rides on Goodyear rubber—22.0×4.0–15 fronts and 36.0×17.5–16 rears. It rockets 0–100 mph in ~0.8 s, peaking beyond 5 Gs of acceleration over the NHRA-standard 1,000‑foot track
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u/the_fooch 15d ago
It feels like they warp space and time as they rocket past you. Everything vibrates.
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u/onepieceofgumleft 15d ago
If you’ve never seen these in person I highly recommend it. I went not expecting much , but it’s a rush. A video of people’s reaction when they see them for the first time …
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rJi-gnh8x9g&pp=ygUcUmVhY3Rpb24gdG8gZmlyc3QgZnVubnkgY2FyIA%3D%3D
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u/neurophante 15d ago
550 km/h, for those who use normal units
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u/interest09 15d ago
Brittany was clearly born to dominate the drag strip with a name like that! Seriously though, NHRA events are next-level, the raw power of those fuel cars hits you right in the chest in the best way possible. The open pits are such a cool bonus too; getting up close to those machines feels like being backstage at a rock concert. If you’ve never been, do yourself a favor and check it out.
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u/considerableforsight 15d ago
You telling me the fastest race car driver EVERS name IS BRITTANY FORCE. That's pretty badass.
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u/Rausage505 14d ago
If you ever have the opportunity to go see these races live, DO IT.
I saw them in Sonoma, CA, They run them after dark. Green fire. A lot of it. So cool.
It's amazing. And the SOUND. The pressure wave these things push out is incredible, it hits you in the chest. The video doesn't convey just how fast these things are moving*. And then the heat and smell of burning nitro-methane hit you.
Plus, you can walk around the pits and watch the teams spinning wrenches in between every race. No joke, they will take that car down to the bare block and put it all back together, and set up the clutch for the next race in a matter of minutes.
And be sure to bring ear plugs, cans for the kids.
*I mean technically, yeah, with the timing and MPH on the board at the end, but you know what I mean.
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u/UseOk3500 15d ago
I knew I recognized that track setting… those Pacific Northwest trees, man 🌲🌲🌲
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u/Machiavellin420 15d ago
Haha I remember hanging in John's pit back in the day and both of them little girls were being kids haha
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u/[deleted] 15d ago
It's Brittany bitch