Top Fuel drag racing is a perfect application for high-speed cameras

Watching a Top Fuel dragster hurl down the quarter mile in the low four-second mark is exciting enough, but watching the action with a high-speed camera is car porn for gear heads. Finnish magazine Tekniikan Maailma (English translation: "Technology World") embedded one of its writers with the race team, and while there is plenty of great footage of what seems to be an average race weekend, the meat of this video is from around the 2:05 mark until about 3:30.

The video was shot in such slow motion that as the cars sit in the staging area, one can actually see the firing order of the engine via the exhaust. The driver's reaction time to the green light is also easily evident, as we see that he actually gets on the throttle as the staging lights are still on. When the tree goes green, fire emerges from the exhaust pipes and the side walls of the Goodyear tires wrinkle from the enormous amount of torque exerted from the nitro-powered V8.

The most impressive view in the video is when the car is passing through the finish line. The rear tires have an interesting deformation and we can actually see the aerodynamics in action as air trails off the rear wing.

At about 40 seconds in length, this video's view of the car's takeoff is actually 10 times longer than the team's complete run which took just 4.19 seconds at around 278 miles per hour. The car's takeoff and acceleration are definitely the highlights of this video, but there are plenty of other interesting things to watch, such as the parachutes being packed before the race, to the fast-motion engine rebuild as the team prepares for the next run.

An interesting side note: the driver of this car is former Finnish ski jumper Janne Ahonen who has a pair of silver medals under his belt from the 2002 and 2006 Olympic Winter Games.

Scroll down to see the video, but be prepared to watch it over and over.