Danica Patrick is one of the most recognizable women in sports: she had a successful racing career, both in IndyCar and NASCAR, and her sponsorship with GoDaddy helped her become a household name.
Working in a male-dominated field like racing, Patrick struggled for acceptance. But she now holds multiple records, like becoming the first and only woman to … More
Eleven thousand horsepower. Let that sink in for a moment: 11,000. But that’s just an approximate calculation for this NHRA Top Fuel monster. It could be more, but there’s no dynamometer on earth that can measure the gut-wrenching, ear-splitting, asphalt-shredding power of a top fuel dragster engine.
These engines are constantly pulled apart and put back together to assure optimal performance on the drag strip. Most teams can completely disassemble and reassemble the engines in less than an hour. But who has an hour to watch an engine rebuild?
We sent Hagerty’s Davin Reckow and the video crew down to Don Schumacher Racing in Brownsburg, Indiana, to give Tony Schumacher’s U.S. Army Top Fuel dragster engine the time-lapse video treatment. The result? Take a quick look and see for yourself.
On Sunday, August 12th, Danny Thompson laid down a 450.909mph record run at the Bonneville Salt Flats using the Challenger 2, a vehicle originally built by his father, Mickey Thompson, in 1968. This run, averaged with a 446.605mph pass he made the previous day, gives the Challenger 2 a new AA/FS record of 448.757mph, and makes it the world’s fastest piston driven record holder. Not bad for a 50 year old race car!
As you can tell, it was a hairy ride, with Danny going almost lock-to-lock on the steering wheel to control a slide at over 430mph. For more information, check out the team website: www.thompsonlsr.com