Facts About Top Fuel
Before their run, racers often perform a burnout in order to clean and heat tires. Additionally, the burnout applies a layer of fresh rubber to the track surface, which greatly improves traction during launch. A burnout may cover up to one quarter of the track's distance.
At maximum throttle and RPM, the exhaust gases escaping from a dragster's open headers produce about 800–1000 pounds (3.6 kilonewtons) of downforce. The massive foil over and behind the rear wheels produces much more, peaking at around 12,000 lbf (53 kN) when the car reaches a speed of about 324 mph (521 km/h).
The engine of a Top Fuel dragster generates around 150 dB of sound at full throttle, enough to cause physical pain or even permanent damage. A sound that intense is not just heard, but also felt as pounding vibrations all over one's body, leading many to compare the experience of watching a Top Fuel dragster make a pass to 'feeling as though the entire drag strip is being bombed'. Before a run, race announcers usually advise spectators to cover or plug their ears. Ear plugs and even earmuffs are often handed out to fans at the entrance of a Top Fuel event.
Dragsters are limited to a maximum length of 300 inches.
Currently, the most prolific active driver in Top Fuel is seven time champion Tony Schumacher, and the winningest crew chief is Alan Johnson, who was the crew chief for all seven of Schumacher's championships, the back-to-back titles won by driver Gary Scelzi and was the crew chief for his brother Blaine for his entire professional career. The first female driver in the Top Fuel category is also the most associated female in the drag racing world, Shirley Muldowney, who won three championships during her career.
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“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“In all her products, Nature only develops her simplest germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create birds. The hawk which now takes his flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice,—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe,... if it was dull, it was at least hung true.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)