As a visceral experience, there are few things that top a Top Fuel drag race. They're really something worth experiencing at least once personally. You really just have to be there.
The pulses are so loud it is like being punched in the chest. Sometimes the engines explode which is also fun as the smoking parts fly around.
Once, the Top Fuel driver had the silly thing in reverse. The christmas tree turned green, and he launched backwards. He had lightning reflexes, chopping the power incredibly fast. The thing still flew back nearly 100 feet, and if it had continued would have climbed up the grandstand behind it.
I never, ever, ever stand in front or in back of a dragster when its engine is running. I also do not stand radially to the engine (when they blow, the parts fly out radially).
Other than that, it is great fun to go to a race in person. It's the only motor sport left where the attendees can go into the pits and watch the mechanics at work. Watching a team rebuild a V8 engine in minutes is amazing. Then they'll fire it up to test it. Blipping the throttle produces shock waves that you can see hitting the bystanders.
The barely restrained violence of those machines is just crazy mad fun you'll never get from watching it on TV.
* I swears it that it wasn't me in the "asking for a friend" manner
It's almost certainly not useful for you but one other motorsport which is comparable in this way is the IOM TT. You can walk around and speak to the guys on the pit crews as they work.
It also offers some visceral experiences, like standing 2ft from the bikes passing you doing the best part of 200mph. In fact when I went a couple of years ago selfie sticks were banned, as you are so close to the action that there is a real danger of hitting a rider with one.
Sure feels like it; don't dare look at a calendar.
STS-121 was 5 years before that. ;)
You either have the worlds most sensitive chest or your memory of the experience is comparable to your memory of the date it occurred, a tad bit distorted. ;)
I was working at a facility where we tested gas turbines and spent a good amount of time studying combustion acoustics. The best way I could describe the feeling standing near the water for the shuttle launch was feeling a continuous combustion pressure hitting my chest. Pounding wasn't the best choice of words.
Definitely not true. We walk the pits every time we go to an IndyCar race. And of course we do the same at the lower level SCCA-level stuff. Trying to think the last time we couldn't get a pit pass and coming up blank.
https://www.amazon.com/Sign-Merlin-Spitfire-Alex-Henshaw/dp/...
The correct title is "Sigh for a Merlin", and refers to the sound a Merlin V12 makes. This engine also powers the P-51, and I can vouch from first hand experience of what that engine sounds like.
The local airplane museum was happy to do a P-51 flyover at my dad's funeral. You could hear its song long before it came into view. Nothing in the world sounds like a RR Merlin V12 wide open.
-- Sigh --
You can walk around the pits and watch the crews doing a partial strip down of the engine for each run, although it's fundamentally basic V8 pushrod technology, it's far more than that.
There is a video [1] with a few slow motion clips of the preparation and running of a Top Fuel car. One poster mentioned a cameraman who stood between two cars, you can clearly see why that wasn't a good idea!!
Looking at how the tyres deform, not just at launch 2:00 but also at 2:50 it looks like they are a real limitation in acceleration. To help them off the line the launch area is really sticky, shoes melt into the 'tarmac'.
The 0-60 time, as with many really fast cars, doesn't tell the whole story of using their 10,000BHP to get to about 330MPH in about 4.5 seconds.
It's something I think you really need to go and see.
I've been to two Top Fuel drag races and I left feeling like I was surrounded by people who have just enough sophistication to know that they like to play with fire whenever possible.
they are not like that, of course, but they were definitely caught up in the visceral feeling of watching a race and I was caught up in the idea that I'd never be able to hear again.
I do not recommend races, myself.
It's weird to hear someone say something is in general a Top Experience.
Like live music, like going to a playoff game, watching a rocket launch. Even if you don't care about the race, the game, or the music. The energy of being in these places, experiencing it, feeling it, the spontaneous giggles, the sense of awe being caught in the middle of it, has a value all its own. You can watch the race on TV, catch the game in a pub, listen to the live recording over, and over, and over again.
But it's not the same as being there.
I agree with what you're saying about live events vs video.
Video is completely useless for this. Drag racing is not.
why does everyone assume I wasn't, then reply as if it is fact? fucking internet, man. no one comprehends anything