One of my other loves is the motorsport of drag racing. no, not the kind of drag racing done on streets by douchebags in falcons and commodores because they think they're out of "the fast and the furious", the professional kind, the kind where even the lowest class of racing entered still beats a well tuned V8 commodore by about 2 seconds, minimum.
This lot of photos is from the 2011 winternationals event, which this year suffered a load of setbacks but finally came to a close today after rain postponed the event for a month. this is the 13th year consecutive that I've made it to the winternationals, so since the first time I went when i was 9 years old, I haven't missed a single one. It's the biggest drag racing event in the southern hemisphere, but this time I was behind the lens. For all of these shots, I was actually using a borrowed lens. since I don't own a decent telephoto lens yet, Ross Ponting gave me a lend of his Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens and 2x teleconverter. Not gonna lie, having use of decent lens really shows compared to my old haminex 300mm. Anyway:
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| For the boost fans... |
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I don't suggest standing in front of this thing's turbo intake...
Might get sucked in... |
Above is a mixture of sports compact, proFX and i think modified dragster (from memory). Though not classified under "Group 1" (top grade drag racing) these cars are still quite spectacular to watch. Most of the turbo rotaries and 6-cylinders in proFX and sports compact though huge exhaust flames while staged and on the limiter, and others (like the rayglass celica above) run into the mid 6s. The motor produces well over 1,600hp and has a turbo large enough to suck large pelicans in.
Below, is pro stock motorcycle and top fuel motorcycle. Pro stock bike is an excessively competitive category, with some competitors qualifying within a hundredths of a second of each other. Times of 7.10s or 7 flat and not uncommon. below that is top fuel bike. essentially the same idea as top fuel dragster, take a big engine, feed it oodles of nitro-methane as fuel, aaand hope for the best. Some of these bikes will get very close to sub 6 second passes at way over 200mph, and for most of the pass, the front wheel won't touch the ground, so the riders have a hard task of using their body weight to fight these bikes to go in a straight line. Not easy to do with a 10 inch wide tyre on the back...
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Some people refuse to accept the fact that this motor's physical capacity
is less than that of a hyundai excel's... |
Next I have top doorslammer. These started out many years ago as the idea of taking a 500 cubic inch top alchohol engine that typically runs 6s, and shoving it in to a sedan bodied car. The end result after many years is these, most of them these days are carbon fibre or fibreglass bodied cars with a chrome-moly chassis (yes, the idea of using chrome-moly tubing for BMX frames DID come from drag racing, by Gary Turner). They still have functioning doors, and look like their road car counterparts, but I can assure you could not drive one on street. A 3000hp+ engine with a supercharger almost as large as the engine block itself is not something you can use to get to the shops and back. In recent times these cars have been stopping the clocks in less than 6 seconds at over 240mph.
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| Current Australian champion John Zappia |
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| Peter Kapiris' absolutely beautiful Saratoga |
Finally, I have a few shots of top fuel. Words cannot put in to perspective what these things can actually do. but I'll try. A top fuel dragster is the fastest and hardest accelerating, piston driven vehicle in existence. On launch, they pull more G-force than a space shuttle launching. They produce EIGHT THOUSAND horsepower, can travel 400 metres in less than 4.5 seconds and clock speeds of 330mph. I cannot take photos of a top fuel dragster through the finish line because I simply can't turn that fast. They set car alarms off over 1km away, shake the ground, distort tyres to look like jelly, throw 6 foot flames and force their chassis to bend up under the shear torque. I once had the opportunity to be on the start line for a test run of a top fuel dragster, and it was an amazing experience. On the hit of the throttle, the ground shook so hard that I could hardly see, breathe or stay standing up, but I watched the car disappear like nothing on earth leaving just a trail of rich smelling burnt nitro-methane in the air. There is nothing else on this planet like top fuel.
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| At this point in the track, it is hard to take a clear photo, because the ground is shaking so hard. |
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Behind is the track crew who work tirelessly to make these work.
In the pits, there are 8 or so more, who rebuild the engine and clutch in 45 minutes. |
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| Often, they go BOOM. But that's ok, the team has 7 more spare engines in the trailer... |
I've had loads of gun lovers say "but it's nothing like .50 cal". Put it this way, the engine turns over at 8000rpm+, and each piston fires once every 2 revolutions, and there's 8 of them. They fire with enough force to accelerate a 750kg car at the rate of 5 times that of the force of gravity. a .50 caliber machine gun fires a bullet 12.7mm in diameter at a rate of 600rpm. if a top fuel engine were a gun, it would fire a bullet twice the size of your fist, at a rate of 32000rpm, and easily penetrate straight through solid alloy engine blocks. How's that for perspective?
