Think your car accelerates fast? Maybe it does, but it’s got absolutely nothing on this beast, which can comfortably out accelerate a jet fighter.
The video gives us a view from the cockpit of 2013 National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) champion Shawn Langdon’s dragster at the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Phoenix in the US.
At first everything is quiet, that is, until the Californian fires up the 10,000bhp-plus engine, which is as loud as it is spine-shatteringly fast. You can clearly see the dragster shaking under the strain of the engine when the cockpit is closed.
There’s a fair bit of preparation before the run so those with a short attention span can skip to the 2:00 mark, but the build up is worth it because when Langdon buries the accelerator you can quite easily blink and miss the show.
So how fast are we talking? Well, it covers a quarter of a mile drag strip in 3.77 seconds, with a final top speed of 316mph. That means 0-316mph in 3.77 seconds. To put that into perspective, the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder and Ferrari LaFerrari need around 11 seconds to cover the same distance.
These engines are so powerful, in fact, that it is said a stock Dodge Hemi V8 lacks the power to drive the Top Fuel’s supercharger. Meanwhile the driver is subjected to more than 4 Gs of acceleration, which makes sense when 0-100mph takes less than a second and 0-200mph takes around two.
Simply put, there is no other land vehicle capable of accelerating that fast, and if there is, it’s probably top secret and only people with ridiculously high security clearance will have seen it.
Now before you complain about the audio, especially if you had the volume cranked up to 11, recording an engine of this power is virtually impossible because it’s just too noisy. As for the lack of focus, well, autofocus is good but capable of going from standing to 300mph? No chance.
Keep-a-scrolling for the cockpit view and then see how one of these Top Fuel engines is built. And, no, it won’t fit on your Ford Focus.
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