A drag race is basically an acceleration contest between two vehicles over a quarter mile (402 meters) from a standing start. The sport began in the United States where it has a strong following and has gradually spread to a number of countries including the UAE.
It started when many US soldiers returned from World War II armed with new skills as engine mechanics. They started modifying standard road cars and motorcycles, tuning their engines for more power and stripping off unwanted bodywork to reduce weight. Equipped with increasingly highly modified bikes and cars, known affectionately as “hot rods”, they raced each other from stop light to stop light in cities across the US.
Drag racing on the streets created noise and real safety issues, and many of these young men were considered outlaws at that time. Gradually the hot rodders moved off the streets and raced on old airfields, where there was no risk to the general public and noise was no longer an issue.
The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) was formed to regulate the new sport and is the largest motorsports organization in the world, with over 80,000 members. The NHRA currently runs a series of 23 events throughout the United States.
In the UAE, car and motorcycle street racing started in the late 1980s when people started to race each other on the public highways. It became so popular in the Emirates and the GCC that people started tuning their cars and bikes to maximise engine performance.
The Yas Marina Drag Racing Centre was created to provide a safer, more controlled environment in which people can pursue their quarter-mile dreams and test their vehicles against the best. The Yas Marina drag strip was completed in two years and presented particular construction challenges. The specially prepared all-concrete race surface has been milled by the leading drag racing track specialist in motorsports, Penhall, and polished by experts from Freeburn to meet exacting NHRA standards. Today, Yas Marina Drag Racing Centre is the only NHRA-approved drag strip outside the US.
The most popular and the most expensive category in Drag Racing is Top Fuel. The cars feature a specially built tube chassis with a nitro-methane-burning supercharged engine producing in excess of 8,000 horsepower. By contrast, the most powerful road-going sports car in the world, the Bugatti Veyron, produces just over 1,000 horsepower. Top Fuel cars are called the kings of the sport and are the quickest and fastest-accelerating wheel-driven vehicles on earth, travelling from zero to 100 miles per hour (160kmh) in 0.8 seconds and reaching more than 310 mph/500kmh. At the completion of the run the cars use a combination of brakes and a parachute to slow the vehicle down.
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