Bruno Massel Gives Us a Full Breakdown of the Evolution and Function of Superchargers in The NHRA

The NHRA has an awesome weekly feature called Tech Talk Tuesdays that bring the race fans into a pit area to show them just how our favorite teams are able to build such astonishing levels of horsepower and keep it glued to the track. This weeks topic of discussion is superchargers and the always entertaining and informative Bruno Massel has the intel on just how these blocks of metal and gears cram tons of air into a Top Fuel engine.

As Massel points out, the supercharger came into existence all the way back in the 1860’s, but has continually evolved and has become the ridiculous air pump we see strapped atop every HEMI in the nitro pits. The supercharger’s job is simple: cram as much air as possible into the engine. However, when you’re talking about enough air to feed an 11,000 horsepower nitromethane-chugging powerplant, that’s quite a task. However, each team has worked side by side with the supercharger manufacturers to make these billet beasts as efficient as possible since it does rob horsepower from the engine to spin the blower. In fact, to crank out the forty pounds of boost required to push a top fuel car to 330+ MPH in 1,000 feet, it take about as much horsepower as a NASCAR engine makes just to spin the blower. If that doesn’t put things into perspective, I don’t know what would!

Bruno picked and excellent pit area to take an up-close look at a modern supercharger, none other than that of world record holder – and Team Speed Society Racing driver – Clay Millican. As we all know, Millican kicked off the 2018 season with an absolute moonshot, clicking off the timers at the Winternationals with a 3.62 elapsed time.