Top Fuel

Imagine that you are tooling around the track at Sonoma Raceway in your supercharged stock car at a steady speed of 200 miles per hour. Further imagine that a top fuel dragster sits at the starting line of the inner quarter-mile drag strip waiting to go. Finally imagine that the dragster’s light turns green at the precise millisecond when you zoom past . . . at 200 miles per hour. Which one of you gets to that quarter-mile-away finish line first? Well, the fact is, despite seeming like a suspension of the laws of physics, that howling monster passes you near the finish line going over 300(!) miles per hour, then pops its twin parachutes to keep from demolishing the perimeter fence and the pastures beyond.

You may think your Camaro ZL1 is hot with its 650 horses. Peanuts. A top fuel dragster’s engine is not manufactured in Detroit. Specialized equipment bores and machines a solid block of aluminum to generate 8,000(!) horsepower. That will take you from zero to 120 mph in one second while mashing you back in your seat like a Biskwik pancake with 5 g’s of force . . . and it’s just getting started. Total elapsed time down the track: 3.5 seconds. Accelerating all the way.

A human being sits in that somewhat controlled explosion the whole way down. On March 14, 2015, three-time NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) champ Larry Dixon approached the finish line at 285 miles per hour when his front end elevated, snapped off, and launched the back end, and Larry, twenty feet in the air before tumbersalting against the concrete wall. He walked away.

Count. Me. Out.

After a successful run, a pickup truck hauls that dragster around to the pits where a crew of heavily-gloved mechanics tears it apart and reassembles it in 70 minutes before the next heat. Off come the twin heads. Out come the pistons so they can replace the torched rings. The spark plugs cooked away halfway down the track, whereafter the engine achieved ignition by heat and compression, so they go in the dumpster while the crew torques in replacements. Ditto the rings of the orbital transmission. Imagine a ballet performed by beefy tattooed men.

Top fuel dragsters run on nitro, short for nitro methane. I asked a driver: Just what is nitro methane? His answer: Liquid dynamite.

The other thing about drag racing at this level . . . Noise. If you forget to put in your earplugs you will be very very very sorry. If you are near the starting line you will experience . . . . acute pain. Our home in Sonoma is eight miles from the Raceway as the decibels fly. When the NHRA comes to town, we hear them.

Race weekend is a carnival. Fans drive their campers from states around, establish a flag-bedecked camper community on nearby fields and ridges, and amble between food stands, the pits, and the grandstands on race day.

Top fuel. What they live for.