Last night there was a Drag Racing presentation on at Shoreham Airport (8 miles East of us). On show were a Methanol Funny Car, Top Fuel Bike and Funny Bike (what technical kit that is!)
Steph Milam - fastest woman in British Motorsport (Note the exhaust fumes!)
Image from their own website. www.shedevilracing.com
A lot of respect to this team, only British owned Funny Car apparently. Almost the whole car is built by themselves too.
3,000bhp, 8.2L V8, Methanol. 238mph top speeds in the 1/4 mile, 0-100mph in about a second.
Dave Jones (Think that's his surname) Funny Bike
Very technical bike, they can control almost anything with the laptop. 600bhp, again running on Methanol. Turbo-charged, rather than supercharged. Speed at the top of about 180, runs of late 6s, early 7s.
Steve Carey, Top Fuel Bike.
Image from www.dragbike.com
Powerful, very heavy to boot. 1,000bhp, over a thousand lbs of weight though! Running on Nitro. 0-100mph in just over a second, times of about 6.6 (running soft), speeds over 200mph at the line.
There were 101 of us, split into 4 groups. One up stairs with the race director of Santa Pod, the others were split around the 3 set-ups down in the workshop. Then at the end the fired them up. Outside of course, it was quite cold, but that was soon fixed when the Funny Car was started up. You can always tell who have never heard Dragsters firing up, particularly the big V8s in the cars. Jump back a mile and in hysterics. The Methanol is only 90p a litre btw. Weird stuff that, the bloke in the Funny bike can put his hand on the engine at the end of a run, because of the temperature of the fuel, it keeps the temperature of the engine very low. I also learnt that because of the huge rear tyres, that the riders don't lean against the way the bike is going, but lean with it. "The bike is heading to the wall, so I'm going to lean towards it!" And the guy from Santa Pod was giving us some stats on the Top Fuellers. A barrel of Nitro (40 gallons), costs ?1,500, lasts 3 runs. Roughly 15 seconds worth of racing per barrel! ?100 a second in fuel alone! Anyway, I'll stop talking and let my decent photos do the talking.
"Purple Princess"
Four Vertical Exhausts, right behind the riders posterior
It's not my thumb...(noob)
"We're screwed..." (I wonder who will get that)
Supercharger on the Funny Car
"This little piggy went to market, that little piggy went to Santa Pod..."
"Is that a cannon aiming at me?"
Mrs Stig?
The yellow scope looking things, are the gear-changing indicators.
Headers or Bi-ceps?
The body was split length-ways (it was a poor moulding so they got it cheap iirc) and they re-built it themselves.
Was a good evening, as the builder of the Funny Car said though, it's a shame there weren't more youngsters from the college at the airport (it's a specialist mechanical engineering one). Thanks to all 3 of them and their crews for bringing their beasts down. So looking forward to the European nationals in September.
Apologies about the quality of some of those. A bit shaky for some of them.
Steph Milam - fastest woman in British Motorsport (Note the exhaust fumes!)
Image from their own website. www.shedevilracing.com
A lot of respect to this team, only British owned Funny Car apparently. Almost the whole car is built by themselves too.
3,000bhp, 8.2L V8, Methanol. 238mph top speeds in the 1/4 mile, 0-100mph in about a second.
Dave Jones (Think that's his surname) Funny Bike
Very technical bike, they can control almost anything with the laptop. 600bhp, again running on Methanol. Turbo-charged, rather than supercharged. Speed at the top of about 180, runs of late 6s, early 7s.
Steve Carey, Top Fuel Bike.
Image from www.dragbike.com
Powerful, very heavy to boot. 1,000bhp, over a thousand lbs of weight though! Running on Nitro. 0-100mph in just over a second, times of about 6.6 (running soft), speeds over 200mph at the line.
There were 101 of us, split into 4 groups. One up stairs with the race director of Santa Pod, the others were split around the 3 set-ups down in the workshop. Then at the end the fired them up. Outside of course, it was quite cold, but that was soon fixed when the Funny Car was started up. You can always tell who have never heard Dragsters firing up, particularly the big V8s in the cars. Jump back a mile and in hysterics. The Methanol is only 90p a litre btw. Weird stuff that, the bloke in the Funny bike can put his hand on the engine at the end of a run, because of the temperature of the fuel, it keeps the temperature of the engine very low. I also learnt that because of the huge rear tyres, that the riders don't lean against the way the bike is going, but lean with it. "The bike is heading to the wall, so I'm going to lean towards it!" And the guy from Santa Pod was giving us some stats on the Top Fuellers. A barrel of Nitro (40 gallons), costs ?1,500, lasts 3 runs. Roughly 15 seconds worth of racing per barrel! ?100 a second in fuel alone! Anyway, I'll stop talking and let my decent photos do the talking.
"Purple Princess"
Four Vertical Exhausts, right behind the riders posterior
It's not my thumb...(noob)
"We're screwed..." (I wonder who will get that)
Supercharger on the Funny Car
"This little piggy went to market, that little piggy went to Santa Pod..."
"Is that a cannon aiming at me?"
Mrs Stig?
The yellow scope looking things, are the gear-changing indicators.
Headers or Bi-ceps?
The body was split length-ways (it was a poor moulding so they got it cheap iirc) and they re-built it themselves.
Was a good evening, as the builder of the Funny Car said though, it's a shame there weren't more youngsters from the college at the airport (it's a specialist mechanical engineering one). Thanks to all 3 of them and their crews for bringing their beasts down. So looking forward to the European nationals in September.
Apologies about the quality of some of those. A bit shaky for some of them.
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