Sports Car Net

Backed by Ken Anderson (acting as Sporting Director) and Peter Windsor (Technical Director), the USF1 team hopes to enter an American-Built Formula One car in the 2010 Grand Prix season. Critics have been quick to point out the difficulty of breaking into the pinnacle of motorsport, but the fledgling team has been planning for several years now and has Bernie Ecclestone’s blessing. They’ve got a lot going for them, as well:

The inevitable effects of a slumping economy is beginning to hit the streets.  The 70′s and 80′s economic slump still causes sport car enthusiasts the world over to shutter to this day.  190 hp Corvettes, Porsches that barely broke a 14 second quarter mile and a selection that was as pathetic as the medical system in Canada.  Now, perhaps the greatest American made sports car is feeling the effects.  GM’s troubles no longer allow it such luxuries as the ZR1, CTS-V or the rest of the high performance pipeline.

General Motors has disbanded its High Performance Vehicle Operations unit, which was responsible for creating such vehicles as the Cadillac CTS-V, Corvette ZR1, and Pontiac G8 GXP. GM’s high-performance vehicles will not be discontinued, but future replacements to these cars might never materialize. In other words, when GM’s existing high-performance models reach the end of planned production, they could be gone for good.

All high-performance vehicles currently under development have been shelved. It is not clear if this includes cars like the Cadillac CTS-V Coupe, which is probably very close to being completed.

“All high-performance projects are on indefinite hold,” spokesman Vince Muniga told Automotive News. “The engineers are moving into different areas of the organization, and they will work on Cadillacs, Buicks, Chevrolets and Pontiacs.”

Muniga added there are no longer any plans for performance-oriented variants of any upcoming cars.
General Motors scraps high-performance division

Top Fuel Dragster motors are quite possible the most amazing racing engines in existence.  If you are not convinced by the time you get through these facts, you will be!

• One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500.
• Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1½ gallons of nitromethane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.
• A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster supercharger.
• With 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.
• At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitromethane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F.
• Nitromethane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.
• Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.
• Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel flow.
• If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.
• In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G’s. In order to reach 200 mph well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G’s.
• Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence.
• Top Fuel Engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!
• Including the burnout the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.
• The red-line is actually quite high at 9500 rpm.

The Bottom Line; Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated US $1,000.00 per second. The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile (10/05/03, Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66′ of the run (09/28/03 Doug Kalitta).
Putting all of this into perspective:
You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter “twin-turbo” powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the ‘Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and past the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The ‘tree’ goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him.

Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race course.