1,000 feet in less than four seconds, from a standstill. This is what it’s like to drive a Top Fuel dragster, as told by Swiss racer Jndia Erbacher.
Sitting on the start line, watching the Christmas tree light up blue, then amber, the driver of a Top Fuel dragster has to tune out everything. The packed grandstands, the presence of an opponent directly to their right or left, and the angrily pulsating, 11,000bhp, nitromethane-fuelled V8 throbbing away inches behind their head – all must be put to the back of their mind.
All they can do is watch the tree, priming themselves for the green light and for the sheer sensory assault that will follow for the next few seconds.
“It’s very hard to describe the feeling you have driving a Top Fuel car,” says Swiss drag racer Jndia Erbacher. “I’m so focused on the driving that I can’t give a lot of attention to what it feels like. You’re on full focus in the car with your helmet on. You hear your breathing, you hear your heart beating… you’re kind of like in a capsule. When you hit that throttle, it’s basically just an explosion happening in your mind, in your body. The car is pulling forwards, and it doesn’t stop – it just wants to go and go and go.”
When you look at a Top Fuel dragster, your eyes feed the imagery back to your brain, which recognises the basic components of a car. There’s a pair of wheels at the front, another at the back, bodywork in the middle and a place for the driver to sit.
Really, though, these machines are related to the average car in the same way that you and I are related to a ring-tailed lemur. Yes, the fundamentals are the same, but most cars can’t cover 1,000 feet in less than four seconds, and don’t belch human-sized columns of white flame from vertical exhausts. Or require a parachute to slow down.
Top Fuel cars are the fastest dragsters in the world, and everything about them is a sensory overload, from the comically exaggerated proportions to the bone-shaking rumble of their idling engines. The ‘Top Fuel’ in question is nitromethane, a fairly unpleasant but highly energy-dense substance also used as a solvent in dry cleaning. Over the 1,000 feet that they run races (various worldwide sanctioning bodies have gradually adopted this shortened distance over the traditional quarter-mile for safety reasons), nothing else on Earth is quicker.
In May 2023, Croatian electric hypercar manufacturer Rimac released a statement claiming that their Nevera had shattered 23 production car acceleration and braking records, including hitting 100mph in a devastatingly quick 3.21 seconds. For comparison, the fastest Top Fuel pass ever recorded over 1,000 feet is 338.94mph, set by two-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Brittany Force (surely an example of nominative determinism) in November 2022. The time taken to cover that ground? 3.64 seconds.
In an era where most motorsports are making a push for greater female representation, it seems significant that a woman holds that record. However, as Jndia confirms, drag racing has always had a strong female presence: “I think [drag racing] is a very open-minded sport when it comes to people… women are very welcome in the sport. As soon as we have the helmet on, we’re all the same.”
As well as in drag racing’s US heartland, where the likes of Brittany Force and sisters Courtney and Ashley have winning races for years, this is evident in the swathes of female competitors in the FIA European Drag Racing Championship. These include 2019’s Top Fuel champion Anita Mäkelä and runner up Maja Udtian, as well as Ida Zetterström and Susanne Callin, who currently occupy the respective first and second spots in the 2023 standings.
Jndia herself is part of a hugely successful drag racing dynasty. Her father, Urs, began competing in the 1980s, working his way up and winning the Top Fuel class in the European Championship in 2007, 2010 and 2011.
Jndia made her first trip to the drag strip with her family when she was three weeks old, so it was fairly inevitable she’d be swept up by the scene. “My father did it for so long, then around six years ago, he was starting to get ready for his retirement from racing [a retirement he’s fulfilled by going to work crafting stunning restomodded Porsche 911s and custom chopper-style motorbikes]. He still loved it, but was just feeling a little bit old for doing it all the time. We were thinking about giving up all the racing and selling everything, and this made me pretty sad.
“Basically, I told my dad that I wanted to try to jump in one of these cars and drive it… I was sitting in this car, and I got addicted.” As a result, Jndia is now carrying the torch for the next generation, graduating to the European Championship’s Top Fuel category aged 23 in 2017, and finishing fourth in 2019 and 2022.
Though it’s growing in popularity, drag racing is still a relatively niche sport in Europe, with the 2023 FIA Championship visiting just three venues across its five-event calendar: Sweden’s Tierp Arena, Hockenheim in Germany, and Britain’s Santa Pod Raceway. The sport’s birthplace and spiritual home is the US, where the National Hot Rod Association has been officially sanctioning it since 1951.
“I did once race in a smaller class called A/Fuel [alcohol fuel, or Top Alcohol] in the US,” says Jndia. These cars, visually similar to Top Fuel machinery, are fuelled by methanol, and run over the traditional quarter mile. They produce a measly 4,000bhp, with the quarter mile record of 5.097 seconds set by Megan Meyer in 2020. “But I’ve never raced in Top Fuel in the US,” continues Jndia. “It’s basically the big dream to go race over there, because it’s faster, bigger, more action-loaded.”
What else is on the cards for her? “The thing with drag racing is that there’s nothing faster than Top Fuel. I’m also enjoying circuit races, so maybe some time I’ll run in the Porsche my father built, but it will never get to be my number one passion.”
No, Jndia’s passion clearly lies with strapping herself into the some of the fastest accelerating land vehicles on the planet, pointing them down an arrow-straight stretch of tarmac, and being one of a select group of people to experience the mind-scrambling shot of adrenaline that comes with going from 0-300mph in four seconds. She is, in short, one of the quickest people on Earth.
