For some, drag racing seems a pointless burn of money, with teams spending millions just to go very fast over a quarter mile. But for others, the smell of high octane, the ground-shaking exhaust sound and those crazy-looking machines blasting by makes for a delicious event to attend.
And as with every other motorsport, drag racing comes with crashes too. You won’t be seeing NASCAR pile-ups here, but when engines are going wrong, there are high chances of explosions, fire and even barrel-rolls.
You might ask why would someone be willing to get in a confined cockpit, surrounded by metal and toxic fumes coming from a huge-displacement engine upfront developing thousands of horsepower just to launch off the line with high chances to turn the whole thing into a fireball.
Well, leaving aside the money part, mankind is obsessed with speed and adrenaline. What can make you feel more alive than stepping on the gas and doing 400 m in roughly 4 seconds? That’s the time in which street legal sportscars only manage to reach 62 mph (100 km/h).
Maybe the part when things go wrong and you see the hood blasting off along with parts of the engine if it’s not equipped with a blanket can beat it. Luckily, this sport is pretty safe, despite what you’ll see in the video bellow. Just over 370 deaths reportedly occurred on drag strips since 1950.
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