As you can probably imagine, it takes an incredible amount of fuel flow to produce the 8,000 horsepower from the nitro burning behemoths that propel a modern Top Fuel Dragster or Funny Car to over 300 miles per hour in less than four  seconds. Over the course of a single pass, the 500 cubic inch Hemi powerplants will gulp an astounding 15 gallons of nitromethane. That includes starting the car, the burnout, backing up, idling, and finally the blast down the quarter mile. Fifteen gallons. And you thought a Hummer burned an obnoxious amount of fuel.

For those that have visited the NHRA Museum in Pomona, California, you may have already seen this. For those that haven’t, this may be rather interesting. Shown here and displayed at the museum is a see-through model of a single cylinder of a nitro-burner. Simulating an actual running situation, the fuel is shown flowing at idle, and then suddenly is kicked up to 8,000 RPM upon launch where two additional fuel nozzles are opened and fuel is poured in at an eye-opening rate of 8 gallons per minute…per cylinder. That’s a total of 64 GPM for all 8 cylinders when at wide open throttle.  Like a 3.7-second pass, this clip is pretty short and sweet, but it illustrates the madness occurring inside the cylinder of a fuel car better than words could possibly describe.