NHRA's Larry Dixon chilling crash in Florida

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
The competing forces of the front air-foil and the acceleration of the rear wheels just broke the mid-section in half.
My sister-in-law's father was racing 20 years ago and they simply built and rebuilt top-fuel cars with no regard for stress/strain calculations. It was all trial and error. They kept taking weight (reinforcement) off until they were the fastest (or until the cars started breaking up). When a car broke, they added more reinforcement at that location and started taking off weight in another location. I hope they are using some computer-aided design packages but, seeing that car break up, I am not too sure.

I think top-fuel cars are the shortest competitions in terms of time off all 'sports'. Maybe some arm-wrestling matches are faster but that is about it.
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
30,720
Looks like the rear wheels were trying to go faster than the front wheels.
Like trying to push a straw into a brick wall.
 
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