To adapt to the extreme working conditions of Drag Racing, professional-grade fuel pumps need to stably output a flow rate exceeding 300% of the normal working conditions within 9 seconds. Take the Top Fuel racing car as an example. Its 8.3-liter supercharged engine consumes 1.2 liters of nitromethane fuel every 1/1000 second. The peak flow rate of the fuel pump is required to reach 100L/min (the pump of an ordinary passenger car is only 8-12L/min), while maintaining a system pressure of ≥700kPa. The fluctuation range must be controlled within ±3%. The 2023 NHRA race data shows that the racing car equipped with the Magnafuel ProStar 750 model has a 1/4-mile acceleration time shortened by 0.04 seconds and a 22% improvement in fuel delivery stability compared with the traditional model.
Fuel supply guarantee under extreme acceleration is a key design challenge. When the vehicle starts with an acceleration of 4G, the fuel in the fuel tank moves backward instantly, causing a sharp increase in the risk of the pump body being exposed. The racing pump needs to be equipped with an anti-cavitation oil storage chamber (with a volume of ≥500ml) and a two-stage impeller system. Even if the instantaneous inclination Angle exceeds 30°, it can still maintain a flow rate of ≥95L/min. The Chevrolet Camaro SS team tested that with the Aeromotive Stealth 340 pump body and the vortex fuel collector, the fuel pressure retention rate was 98.6% at a longitudinal acceleration of 2.2G, a 37% improvement over the unoptimized design. Eliminate the problem of the mixture being too thin under high-load conditions (narrow the fluctuation range of the air-fuel ratio to ±0.3).
Thermal management performance determines the continuous combat capability. When there are two consecutive back-to-back races, the cavity temperature of the Fuel Pump can rise to 120℃ within 90 seconds. It adopts a 7075-T6 aviation aluminum housing (with a heat dissipation efficiency 40% higher than cast iron) and is equipped with PTFE self-lubricating bearings, reducing the friction loss to 18% of that of traditional copper sleeve bearings. The pump body of the Bosch Motorsport series integrates a PTC thermistor (response time ≤0.2 seconds). When the oil temperature is detected to be >95℃, it automatically starts the auxiliary cooling, suppressing the temperature rise rate from 15℃/ minute to 4℃/ minute, ensuring that the pump body maintains a competitive life of 50 hours under the working condition of 5,000 horsepower.
Lightweight and rapid response constitute competitive advantages. The carbon fiber housing reduces the pump body mass to 0.45kg (equivalent to 35% of the steel model), and reducing the unsprung mass by 0.5kg is equivalent to improving the propulsion efficiency by 0.15%. The response speed of the electronic control unit is ≤10ms, which is six times faster than that of conventional fuel pumps, ensuring a sudden increase of 60L/s in flow when the throttle opens instantly. According to the event data analysis of Dodge Demon 170, optimizing the oil pump system has reduced the acceleration time in the 60-130 MPH range by 0.8 seconds, lowered the fuel supply cost for a single race by 17% (calculated at 98 per liter of nitromethane), and saved the team’s annual budget by more than 41,000.