When Tony Schumacher stages his U.S. Army-sponsored Top Fuel dragster at the starting line, it sounds like ground zero in an artillery barrage. The exhaust pulses from the supercharged V8 literally turn your stomach to jelly and make the ground quake beneath your feet. Then the light turns green and the engine propels the car to the end of the quarter-mile in less than 5 seconds at over 330 mph.
That's when the real race against time begins.
Following each and every pass down the quarter-mile, the mechanical heart of Schumacher's dragster is torn out, reduced to little more than a heap of parts on the pavement, and then reassembled in less than an hour. Once it's beating again with the pulse of 8,000 horsepower, the engine will do its best all over again to shrink the time it takes to go from one end of the drag strip to the other.
When Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) introduced us to its 300-mph time machine at the 2007 NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, California, we discovered that drag racing is truly about time, only it's about time management in the pits as well as quick times on the racetrack.
Green means go
Making his first qualifying pass down the track, driver Tony Schumacher steps into the throttle and the 500-cubic-inch (8.2-liter) V8 immediately leaps to 8,200 rpm as the headers unleash an unholy, deafening bellow and the dragster slingshots forward at almost six times the force of gravity. At this point, Schumacher is temporarily reduced to being little more than a bit of squishy, vulnerable ballast in the world's most forcefully accelerating conveyance.
It's simply impossible to transmit the engine's full brutality to the pavement at a launch without inducing time-wasting wheelspin, so the clutch slips continuously to keep the tires on the edge of adhesion. Near the 1/8th-mile mark, the downforce generated by the rear wing has given the rear tires sufficient bite to finally transmit the full power from the raging supercharged V8, which is equivalent to the output of 38 Dodge Nitros. Later, as the dragster approaches the quarter-mile mark, the rear wing shoves it downward with a force equivalent to the weight of two Corvettes.
Once the car bursts through the speed trap at the end of the quarter-mile, the subsequent deceleration subjects Schumacher to more physical abuse than he has withstood so far. When he deploys the twin parachutes, Schumacher gets a rearward yank of 5g, an amplified echo of a 4.485-second qualifying pass at 320.58 mph.
Coordinated insanity
Schumacher's crew is concerned. The 320.58-mph trap speed is about 10 mph slower than a typical pass for the DSR car, so something is clearly wrong. Seven crew members descend on the car when it returns to the pits, and without rushing or fumbling, the men methodically disassemble the engine down to a nearly bare block in minutes.
Before the car is even jacked in the air, the chassis belly pan is removed and slid away. The 70-weight engine oil is drained from the wet sump and the engine pan is removed. With the engine's oil-coated bottom end exposed to open air, a searing stench of partially combusted nitro and superheated oil permeates the pit area.
Just three minutes into the disassembly, the supercharger and intake manifold assembly have been lifted off the engine. The Roots-type supercharger will be torn down later and the internal clearances checked. Meanwhile, the clutch assembly is dismantled and quickly ferried into the hauler for its own rebuild.
Four minutes. First the valve covers and then the valvetrain's rocker-shaft assemblies are removed so the billet-aluminum cylinder heads (with headers still attached) can be slid off the mounting studs and set aside for inspection. The crankshaft's main-bearing caps are examined, and if they're healthy the engine block will remain in the car during the overhaul. Then the connecting rods are unbolted and out pop the still-hot pistons. Two damaged cylinder sleeves, possibly a factor in the car's weak trap speed during the qualifying pass, have been discovered and are slide-hammered out. Fresh sleeves are pressed in with the billet-aluminum engine block in situ.
From the time the car arrives in the pits until the pistons are in hand, less than six minutes have elapsed. Every component removed during this period will be inspected, reconditioned or simply relegated to the junk heap.
On a knife's edge
Traction, not power, is the fundamental and ultimate challenge for a Top Fuel dragster. By examining the engine's internal health and comparing it to the car's performance, Crew Chief Alan Johnson can make an informed decision about the best compromise between the engine's compression ratio (which determines power) and the clutch's lockup characteristics (which determine traction). So tightly guarded are details of the clutch pack that we were forbidden to photograph it.
After the engine is disassembled and inspected, the crew's activity finally settles down. The naked engine block lurks conspicuously in the dragster. An hour before the car lines up to stage for its next pass, an assessment of track conditions is radioed in by the team's dedicated trackside specialist. This report gives Johnson up-to-the-second insight about the amount of engine power the track can handle and the compression ratio required to achieve it.
Dialing in the engine's compression ratio is not a simple matter of choosing a set of pistons. DSR documents the volume of every combustion chamber and groups rods and pistons into "racks" based on the compression height produced by each assembly. Johnson then matches a rack to an appropriate set of heads and chooses among copper head gaskets that vary in thickness by a few thousandths of an inch.
Knowing just how much compression ratio a track can withstand requires an enormous depth of knowledge and experience, and DSR is a team with knowledge and experience. Crew Chief Alan Johnson has won three world championships and is a legendary tuner. Assistant Crew Chief Jason McCullouch is the son of famous driver/tuner Ed McCullouch. And of course Tony Schumacher is the son of team owner Don Schumacher, a famous driver/tuner in Funny Cars during the 1960s and '70s.
The price of time
For every race, Don Schumacher Racing brings along its car, 13 preassembled short blocks and two tractor-trailers that house a full machine shop plus every tool imaginable. Since a Top Fuel engine costs about $50,000, the frugal need not apply.
Then there are the spare parts. In the 4.5 seconds that it takes to make a pass through the quarter-mile, many of the engine's internal components have expended a large portion of their useful lives. After three runs down the 1320, the billet-aluminum connecting rods are deformed beyond hope. After five runs, the pistons are history. After eight passes and a total of two miles, the $5,000 billet-steel crankshaft is junk.
Yet the parts are nothing without the time-management specialists from Don Schumacher Racing, whose calm, fluid movements belie their ability to squeeze amazing tasks in an impossibly short period of time. They should have one of those late-night ads on cable television, the ones where efficiency experts sell you high-priced calendars so you can learn to manage your own time more wisely, promising bliss in just 48 easy payments.
Time is money. The latter begets the former in drag racing, the strangest synthesis of mystery and accessibility in motor racing. Learn how to manage time wisely, and you can do the quarter-mile in less than 5 seconds at more than 330 mph.
That's when the real race against time begins.
Following each and every pass down the quarter-mile, the mechanical heart of Schumacher's dragster is torn out, reduced to little more than a heap of parts on the pavement, and then reassembled in less than an hour. Once it's beating again with the pulse of 8,000 horsepower, the engine will do its best all over again to shrink the time it takes to go from one end of the drag strip to the other.
When Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) introduced us to its 300-mph time machine at the 2007 NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, California, we discovered that drag racing is truly about time, only it's about time management in the pits as well as quick times on the racetrack.
Green means go
Making his first qualifying pass down the track, driver Tony Schumacher steps into the throttle and the 500-cubic-inch (8.2-liter) V8 immediately leaps to 8,200 rpm as the headers unleash an unholy, deafening bellow and the dragster slingshots forward at almost six times the force of gravity. At this point, Schumacher is temporarily reduced to being little more than a bit of squishy, vulnerable ballast in the world's most forcefully accelerating conveyance.
It's simply impossible to transmit the engine's full brutality to the pavement at a launch without inducing time-wasting wheelspin, so the clutch slips continuously to keep the tires on the edge of adhesion. Near the 1/8th-mile mark, the downforce generated by the rear wing has given the rear tires sufficient bite to finally transmit the full power from the raging supercharged V8, which is equivalent to the output of 38 Dodge Nitros. Later, as the dragster approaches the quarter-mile mark, the rear wing shoves it downward with a force equivalent to the weight of two Corvettes.
Once the car bursts through the speed trap at the end of the quarter-mile, the subsequent deceleration subjects Schumacher to more physical abuse than he has withstood so far. When he deploys the twin parachutes, Schumacher gets a rearward yank of 5g, an amplified echo of a 4.485-second qualifying pass at 320.58 mph.
Coordinated insanity
Schumacher's crew is concerned. The 320.58-mph trap speed is about 10 mph slower than a typical pass for the DSR car, so something is clearly wrong. Seven crew members descend on the car when it returns to the pits, and without rushing or fumbling, the men methodically disassemble the engine down to a nearly bare block in minutes.
Before the car is even jacked in the air, the chassis belly pan is removed and slid away. The 70-weight engine oil is drained from the wet sump and the engine pan is removed. With the engine's oil-coated bottom end exposed to open air, a searing stench of partially combusted nitro and superheated oil permeates the pit area.
Just three minutes into the disassembly, the supercharger and intake manifold assembly have been lifted off the engine. The Roots-type supercharger will be torn down later and the internal clearances checked. Meanwhile, the clutch assembly is dismantled and quickly ferried into the hauler for its own rebuild.
Four minutes. First the valve covers and then the valvetrain's rocker-shaft assemblies are removed so the billet-aluminum cylinder heads (with headers still attached) can be slid off the mounting studs and set aside for inspection. The crankshaft's main-bearing caps are examined, and if they're healthy the engine block will remain in the car during the overhaul. Then the connecting rods are unbolted and out pop the still-hot pistons. Two damaged cylinder sleeves, possibly a factor in the car's weak trap speed during the qualifying pass, have been discovered and are slide-hammered out. Fresh sleeves are pressed in with the billet-aluminum engine block in situ.
From the time the car arrives in the pits until the pistons are in hand, less than six minutes have elapsed. Every component removed during this period will be inspected, reconditioned or simply relegated to the junk heap.
On a knife's edge
Traction, not power, is the fundamental and ultimate challenge for a Top Fuel dragster. By examining the engine's internal health and comparing it to the car's performance, Crew Chief Alan Johnson can make an informed decision about the best compromise between the engine's compression ratio (which determines power) and the clutch's lockup characteristics (which determine traction). So tightly guarded are details of the clutch pack that we were forbidden to photograph it.
After the engine is disassembled and inspected, the crew's activity finally settles down. The naked engine block lurks conspicuously in the dragster. An hour before the car lines up to stage for its next pass, an assessment of track conditions is radioed in by the team's dedicated trackside specialist. This report gives Johnson up-to-the-second insight about the amount of engine power the track can handle and the compression ratio required to achieve it.
Dialing in the engine's compression ratio is not a simple matter of choosing a set of pistons. DSR documents the volume of every combustion chamber and groups rods and pistons into "racks" based on the compression height produced by each assembly. Johnson then matches a rack to an appropriate set of heads and chooses among copper head gaskets that vary in thickness by a few thousandths of an inch.
Knowing just how much compression ratio a track can withstand requires an enormous depth of knowledge and experience, and DSR is a team with knowledge and experience. Crew Chief Alan Johnson has won three world championships and is a legendary tuner. Assistant Crew Chief Jason McCullouch is the son of famous driver/tuner Ed McCullouch. And of course Tony Schumacher is the son of team owner Don Schumacher, a famous driver/tuner in Funny Cars during the 1960s and '70s.
The price of time
For every race, Don Schumacher Racing brings along its car, 13 preassembled short blocks and two tractor-trailers that house a full machine shop plus every tool imaginable. Since a Top Fuel engine costs about $50,000, the frugal need not apply.
Then there are the spare parts. In the 4.5 seconds that it takes to make a pass through the quarter-mile, many of the engine's internal components have expended a large portion of their useful lives. After three runs down the 1320, the billet-aluminum connecting rods are deformed beyond hope. After five runs, the pistons are history. After eight passes and a total of two miles, the $5,000 billet-steel crankshaft is junk.
Yet the parts are nothing without the time-management specialists from Don Schumacher Racing, whose calm, fluid movements belie their ability to squeeze amazing tasks in an impossibly short period of time. They should have one of those late-night ads on cable television, the ones where efficiency experts sell you high-priced calendars so you can learn to manage your own time more wisely, promising bliss in just 48 easy payments.
Time is money. The latter begets the former in drag racing, the strangest synthesis of mystery and accessibility in motor racing. Learn how to manage time wisely, and you can do the quarter-mile in less than 5 seconds at more than 330 mph.
Add A Comment »
mollykate says:
01:04 AM, 02/03/2011
heres a little example of nhra-20 more days 'til season opening race in Pomona,Cali!!!!
WATCH THE VIDEO AND READ THE CAPTION!