We don't care how much wood a woodchuck would chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. Because we're not into wood, we're into cars. So we do care how much horsepower a Top Fuel dragster would register if a Top Fuel dragster could be put on a dyno.
For those in a hurry, the quick answer is 11,051. It's a big number, but maybe some of you will be wondering what the big deal is. You see, measuring exactly how much power a Top Fuel dragster puts out was one of life's great mysteries. A gearhead's Higgs boson, if you will.
You can't just hook up a dragster to a dyno because, as Hot Rod Magazine points out, there aren't any dynos that can measure such high levels of torque. So people were basically making educated guesses, rough estimates, assumptions... and lots of numbers were being thrown around. Recent calculations had the figure at somewhere around 10,000 bhp.
Thanks to the ingenuity of a cooperation between Race Engine Technology magazine, AVL Racing and Don Schumacher Racing, we now know that a Top Fuel dragster can put out as much as 11,051 bhp (roughly 11,200 hp). Mechanics fitted a torque sensor at the coupling between the clutch packs and differential, and the measurements were recorded by a Racepak data logger.
Using the formula to calculate horsepower from torque and rpm, a test run with Tony Schumacher’s US Army dragster registered an average of over 7,000 bhp and a peak of 10,156 bhp from the Top Fuel beast. A second test yielded 11,051 bhp. That's as much as 60 Honda Accords put together.
While certainly impressive, that's not the end of it. A dragster could potentially put out even higher figures! That's because the National Hot Rod Association has a lot of rules and regulations that limit the car: competitors can only use a certain type of supercharger, they have rpm limiters installed, gear limitations, et cetera.
So then, a new question: how much horsepower would a Top Fuel dragster register if a Top Fuel dragster could be put on a dyno and all NHRA regulations would be disregarded?
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