Drag Racer Coloring Page: Free Printable PDF Sheet

Drag Racer: History & Fun Facts

A Sport Built Around One Straight Line

Drag racing turns motorsport into its simplest possible question: which car gets from a standing start to the finish line first. The National Hot Rod Association, founded by Wally Parks in 1951, organized the sport into a set of standardized events after years of impromptu street racing on dry lakebeds and back roads in Southern California. Instead of turns, banking, or lap counts, a drag race is decided in a single explosive run down a straight strip, which is why a dragster's whole shape is stretched long and thin like an arrow.

The classic race distance was a quarter mile, 1,320 feet, for most of drag racing's history. In 2008 the NHRA's fastest Top Fuel and Funny Car classes shortened the run to 1,000 feet for safety, since the cars had become so powerful that a quarter mile no longer left enough room to stop safely at the far end.

Why the Front Wheels Look So Tiny

A Top Fuel dragster's front wheels carry almost none of the car's weight during the run, since nearly all of it shifts onto the massive rear tires the instant the car launches. That's why the front wheels on this coloring page are so much smaller and thinner than the rear tires. Small, narrow front wheels also cut wind resistance, since the front of a dragster is really just a needle-shaped nose reaching out ahead of the driver and the engine.

The driver sits far back near the rear axle, right behind the engine, in an extremely narrow cockpit built to fit the body and nothing more. Every extra inch of width or height on a dragster adds drag that slows the car down over a run measured in mere seconds.

Slick Tires, Nitro Fuel, and a Parachute to Stop

The enormous rear tires on a Top Fuel dragster are called slicks because they have no tread pattern at all, just smooth rubber that maximizes contact with the track surface for grip. At launch, that grip has to handle an engine burning nitromethane fuel that can produce roughly 11,000 horsepower, letting a Top Fuel car accelerate from a standing start to over 300 miles per hour in well under four seconds.

Stopping a car moving that fast takes more than brakes alone, which is why a folded parachute pack sits at the very back of the car, ready to deploy the instant the run ends. The tall wing mounted high above the rear tires presses the car down onto the track at speed, keeping the tires planted through the vibration and wheel spin of a full-power run. Every part of a dragster, from the needle nose to the towering rear wing, exists purely to go fast in a straight line and stop safely afterward.

The Christmas Tree Starts Every Run

Every drag race begins at a light tower called the Christmas Tree, a column of amber, green, and red bulbs that count down before the green light triggers the launch. Drivers stage their front tires in a beam right at the starting line, and a good reaction time off that green light can decide a close race before the cars even reach top speed. Because two dragsters race side by side down separate lanes, the winner isn't always the one going fastest at the finish, it's the one who crosses the line first once reaction time and elapsed time are combined.