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.