DRAG RACING

INTRODUCTION:
DRAG RACING is a very popular sport these days. As the name
suggests it is a sport that involves racing of cars, bikes, called
DRAGSTERS or HOT RODS. Eventually the sport is also called HOT
RODDING.

ORIGIN:

The origin of the sport can be traced back to the 1500s. Basically
it was not a sport then, at that time drag was a heavy sledge that
was drawn by horses. The connection to the sport comes in the
18th century in which smaller drag vehicles were used for hauling
of goods and the poor people had an ingenious idea of adding
wheels to them. Samuel Johnson defined such a vehicle in A
dictionary of the English Language, 1755:
Drag ... Somewhat like a low car: it is used for the carriage of
timber, and then is drawn by the handle by two or more men.
The nowadays meaning of drag came from England to the USA in
the 1950s, and it involved teenagers racing their vehicles along a
race track, about a quarter or half mile long, in a straight line.
Soon the sport became so famous that an association was
formed, which was solely dedicated to the promotion and
progress of this street pastime; called the US NATIONAL HOT ROD
ASSOCIATION (NHRA), in 1951. Hence the link of the sport to the
original meaning has been lost, and nothing is hauled or dragged
around.

METHODOLOGY:
APPLIED PRINCIPLE:

The basic principle of dragging or drag racing is to change the

gears on the right instant, and the winner is decided by a mere
fraction of a second.

Normal cars or sedans cannot be used for the sport because the
engine demands shifting up and down of gears at a low rpm,
because the engine cannot withstand the load, and consequently
gets blown up. So the vehicles are modified completely, having a
special fuel, special modified engine, and a special transmission
system.
Before their run, racers often perform a burnout in order to clean
and heat tires. Additionally, the burnout applies a layer of fresh
rubber to the track surface, which greatly improves traction
during launch.
CLASSES
There are more than 200 classes of drag racing vehicles featured
in NHRA competition. The four Professional categories are Top
Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle.
TOP FUEL DRAGSTER
The Top Fuel Dragsters are among the fastest accelerating
machines in the world reaching a speed of more than 325 mph in
less than 3.8 seconds. The Top Fuel cars can differ from on to the
other but they all ultimately have an average of 7,000horsepower. All Top Fuel cars are 25 feet long and weigh 2,320
pounds.
FUNNY CAR
Similar in shape and dimensions to your day to day productionbased automobiles but closest to the performance of a Top Fuel
dragster, the Funny Car can reach up to 315 mph in less than 4
seconds. This class of drag racing car is characterized by having a
fiberglass or a carbon fiber body that tilts off of the custom built
chassis.
PRO STOCK
Whilst also bearing a resemblance to the production-based cars
the Pro Stock, commonly known as the Factory Hot Rods, can
run at the speed of more than 210 mph in less than 6.4 seconds.
The difference between the Funny and the Pro Stock classes is
that the Pro Stockers have smaller engines (limited to 500 cubic
inch), a different body and chassis and they have a big
resemblance to the stock NASCAR event cars.
PRO STOCK MOTORCYCLE

Pro Stock Motorcycles are simply highly modified motorcycles with

a chassis that is built with the main purpose of drag racing and
aerodynamically enhanced bodywork that is a usually a replicated
off of the production-based bikes. The Pro Stock Motorcycles can
run across the drag strip in under 6.8 seconds at a speed higher
than 195 mph.

SYSTEMS OF A HOT ROD/DRAGSTER:

ENGINE
Top Fuel engine is built exclusively of specialist parts. It retains
the basic configuration with two valves per cylinder activated by
pushrods from a centrally-placed camshaft. The engine has
hemispherical combustion chambers. The configuration is
identical to the overhead valve, single camshaft-in-block "Hemi"
V-8 engine.
SUPERCHARGER
A supercharger is an air compressor which increases the pressure
and density of air intake by an internal combustion engine, thus
each cycle gets more oxygen and burns more fuel thereby
increasing the power.
Power for the supercharger can be provided mechanically by
means of a belt, gear, shaft, or chain connected to the engine's
crankshaft. When power is provided by a turbine powered by
exhaust gas, the supercharger is known as a TURBO SUPER
CHARGER or simply TURBO.
OIL & FUEL SYSTEM
The oil system has a self-lubricating oil management design for
piston engines. Fuel is injected by a constant flow injection
system. There is an engine driven mechanical fuel pump and
about 42 fuel nozzles. The pump can flow 380 litres per minute at
7500 rpm and 500 psi fuel pressure. In general 10 injectors are
placed in the injector hat above the supercharger, 16 in the intake
manifold and two per cylinder in the cylinder head. Usually a race
is started with a leaner mixture, then as the clutch begins to
tighten as the engine speed builds, the air/fuel mixture is
enriched. As the increased engine speed builds up pump

pressure, the mixture is made leaner to maintain a predetermined

ratio that is based on many factors, especially race track surface
friction.
IGNITION & TIMING
The air/fuel mixture is ignited by two 14 mm spark plugs per
cylinder. These plugs are fired by two 44-ampere magnetos.
Normal ignition timing is 58-65 degrees before the top dead
centre is reached. The ignition system keeps the engine speed to
a limited 8400rpm.
BODY DESIGN
The suspension design should be aerodynamic with custom mods
so as to minimize air friction. The complexity of automobile and
race car aerodynamics is comparable to airplane aerodynamics
and is not limited to drag reduction only. The generation of
downforce and its effect on lateral stability has a major effect on
race car performance. In the process of designing and refining
current race car shapes, all aerospace-type design tools are used.
Because of effects such as flow separations, vortex flows, or
boundary-layer transition, the flow over most types of race cars is
not always easily predictable. Due to the competitive nature of
this sport and the short design cycles, engineering decisions must
rely on combined information from track, wind tunnel, and
computational fluid dynamics tests.

CONCLUSION:
SAFETY REQUIREMENTS

The NHRA requires all drivers to wear specific protective gear that
is certified as quoted from the rulebook Modifications to
helmet/shield are prohibited. All helmets must have the
appropriate certification sticker affixed inside the helmet.
The Safety Safari, a crew of safety personnel trained to
extinguish car fires, clean accident debris and keep the driver
alive till the ambulance arrives, alongside an ambulance are
always on standby ready to deal with any emergency. The NHRA
also mandated that different rear tires be used to reduce failure,
and that a titanium shield be attached around the back-half of the
suspension to prevent any debris from entering the cockpit. As
mentioned above drivers use nitromethane as the fuel but

nitromethane was banned officially by the NHRA in 1957 because

it proved to be fatal and could light up the whole vehicle into
flames as it burns very quickly and readily. Another reason to ban
nitromethane was that it produced so much energy that the
vehicle would go up into the air rather than stay on the ground,
but still street racers and underground racing clans/groups use
nitromethane .

CRASHES
Drag racing accidents are an unavoidable occurrence and only a
small number of them happen to be fatal. There are a lot of
reasons that can lead to these accidents some of these are
technical malfunctions, driver errors and rarely some debris on
the road.

LICENSES

According to the official NHRA website if a driver wants to enter

any event conducted by the NHRA that driver must have a valid
State or Government-issued drivers license or an NHRA
Competition License. A current NHRA membership is also required
to participate in any NHRA-sanctioned event.

REFRENCES
http://www.etownraceway.com/drag_racing_rules.aspx
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/the-history-of-dragracing-ar110505.html
http://www.drivingline.com/articles/the-history-of-drag-racing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Fuel
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228616843_Aerodynami
cs_of_race_cars