One of the great pleasures that any long time drag racing fans has is dragging a couple of buddies to a race that have never experience a Top Fuel Dragster in person before. I’ve been lucky enough to spend time at dozens of different types of races in my life and still nothing compares to a modern fuel car. There are no words to even begin to describe what it feels like when one of these hellacious machines goes from idle to full throttle and streaks by you on the strip.
I normally tell people that they will feel their guts move around, because they will. Of course, they don’t believe me, but after the first pair go down and their eyes are the sizes of saucers, my guests and I are on the same page. The next thing out of their mouth is usually a question along the lines of, “How many more times do we get to see that?!”
This neat video put together by the fine people at the Perth Motorplex in Australia uses a simple cup of water, placed pretty high up on the grandstands to illustrate the “good vibrations” produced by a Top Fuel Dragster at the hit of the throttle. This is probably the coolest way we have seen this phenemenon illustrated.
Press play and feal the NITRO THUNDER!
Yep!! I was one of those idiots that said “I don’t need no stinkin earplugs” the first time….. Man did I get educated!!!
I’ll do my best to describe this experience, but it’s definitely in the “you had to be there to understand” category.
I go to Gainesville for the Gatornationals some years. We had parked out by the road and just begun making our way towards the track when someone fired up a fuel car in the pits, about a 1/4 mile (~400 meters) away.
We could hear the car idling, then the throttle was cracked open for a momentary rev.
The sound crossed the parking lot, passed us and bounced back from the trees on the other side of the road behind us.
Although it didn’t have the intense volume that you get up close, I could detect the leading edge of the sound as it approached us, passed by and echoed back again. It was really strange to be able to locate the leading edge of a sound. You could tell it was coming before you heard it!
Oh Yeah first run you have to man up and take it with no hearing protection! after that of course…well you know LOL
Even that video does not come close. It’s just not explainable. I grew up about 4 miles from Maple Grove Raceway. At home, I remember hearing the roar of the nitro cars. Just like rolling thunder. Back in the early 80’s I had the “pleasure” of seeing many nitro races from a distance of maybe 12 feet from the guardrail!