KEY POINTS:
Imagine 20 Greg Murphys storming away from the start of a V8 Supercar race. That's the power Willy White will experience at Meremere this weekend.
White is bringing his fire-breathing Nitro Funny Car to the national drag-racing championships at the Champion Dragway south of Auckland.
And he has his eye on the New Zealand drag-racing speed and elapsed time records set by Garth Hogan in his Top Fuel dragster almost 20 years ago.
On his last visit to Meremere White got within 6/3000 of a second of Hogan's record with 5.589s at around 234 mph (376.50 km/h). Drag-racing aficionados tend to think in miles an hour because the United States is the sport's mecca and the metric system is a slow starter there.
"Our top speed should be around 280 mph," said White. "But we had some tyre slippage and we dropped a cylinder on that run.
"When we came to stop the chutes didn't deploy so it was quite exciting."
Funny Cars hide their awesome power inside conventional body shells. White's machine has the appearance of a 2003 Pontiac. But that is where the connection ends.
It is powered by a 498-cubic-inch Brad Anderson alloy V8, generating 7000 brake horsepower. It was built in the US and competed on the NHRA circuit before White took over a couple of years ago.
He reels off a series of impressive statistics. Running on a mixture of 90 per cent nitro-methane and 10 per cent methanol, the engine burns fuel at the same rate as a fully loaded Boeing 747.
It can accelerate from 0 to 100 mph in under a second, with White experiencing 5-6 g forces at the start and the same rate of negative gs as it slows down. It will burn through 50-60 litres of fuel in a single run.
In the 90 minutes between runs White and his team of five will take out and check the supercharger and eight pistons, change five clutch discs and replace 16 sparkplugs. Running the machine can cost $1000 a second, provided the helpers are volunteers.
So it's no surprise that there may be only six or seven runs each season and Meremere is the only track White considers suitable.
He has been in the drag-racing game for 20 years and for many years the Hastings track was handy to his home. But that strip now grows grapes and he has to travel to compete.
As White launches an attack on the speed records tomorrow, the veteran Hogan will be on hand with the front-engined "nostalgia" dragster he and friend Pete Thompson have put together. Hogan describes it as "two old jokers having some fun" but he admits that the dragster, christened "Unfinished Business", got a little out of hand as the project advanced to be bigger and quicker than originally envisioned.
Today is compulsory qualifying, from noon to 5pm. Tomorrow, race day runs from 9.30am to 5pm.
