In RACER Magazine: Funny Car’s Jet Age

A simple tweak to the exhaust headers of NHRA's 11,000hp, nitro-burning Funny Cars has unleashed record-ripping performance.

Something obvious, something right out in the open – one of the few parts of a Funny Car engine that's visible even when the body's down – has unleashed perhaps drag racing's greatest performance breakthrough in a generation.

Launched by Cruz Pedregon almost two years ago and mandated by Jack Beckman's incredible performance last summer, the laid-back header craze has swept Funny Car racing in 2016, making them faster than even the kings of the sport, the Top Fuel dragsters. It's also made them a lot harder to drive.

"It's like trying to drive a sprint car now," says 20-year veteran and 50-time event winner Ron Capps, who's led the NHRA standings for much of the 2016 season. "The car's hunting around the whole time – the front end isn't touching the ground much anymore. The headers are laid back so far now that they're just catapulting you down the track. The left-front tire was already in the air before we all got these headers – that's torque. But now you've got the right-front tire off the ground for several hundred feet, too."

"These headers are turning Funny Cars into jet cars," says legend John Force, who has three times as many Funny Car victories as any other driver. "When a cylinder goes out, it's a way bigger deal than it used to be. The car's always trying to carry the front end, and that makes them harder to drive – a lot harder."

It also makes them faster – much faster. "These headers took us from four-second-flats and high-3.90s, to 3.80s real fast," says Matt Hagan, the first Funny Car driver into the three-second zone (Charlotte, 2011) and first into the 3.80s (Brainerd, 2015). "They've been huge. I mean, what else can you bolt on a car and pick up that much E.T.?

"But it's not just the headers, it's a combination of things. Don't forget the blowers, the manifolds, and what the crew chiefs still have to do to apply all this power to the race track with less downforce than they used to have."

Hagan made the fastest Funny Car run of all time, 335.57mph, at Topeka on May 20, on the same run in which he lowered the E.T. record to 3.862sec. That .86 has since been bettered repeatedly, but he got back to No. 1 with a 3.822 run at Brainerd, Minn., that ended with him in the opposite lane in the shutdown area, trying to wrestle the brutish 11,000hp beast to a stop.

"Once that car gets pointed in one direction, there's no yarding it back," Hagan says. "It's gonna go where it wants to go. When you're in the 3.80s, it's up on the tires and just hauling ass the whole way. You can barely see over the top of the injector. The front end is kind of floating around. It's loose, and loose is fast. The crew chiefs are doing everything they can to keep the nose on the ground, but however much harder you're pushing a car forward with thrust, you're losing that much in downforce. It's an absolute handful downtrack, but that's why we like to drive these things. Because not just anybody can get in there and do it."

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