I was watching qualifying for the NHRA drag racing event at Las vegas tonight when I happened to think of the maintainance to operation ratio of these vehicles.
I think I heard one time that helicopters require six hours of service for each hour of flight. A ratio of 6 to 1.
Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars get over an hour of service for each quarter-mile run.
If you include idling time it's about two minutes per run. A ratio of 30 to 1.
If you count only the five seconds they are running at full power (7,000 to 8,000 horsepower!), that's a ratio of 720 to 1 !!!!
Also, counting only the five seconds they are running at full throttle, it costs $1,000 a second in operating expenses.
The nitromethane fuel they use costs about $40 per gallon, five gallons per quarter-mile run.
The currant quarter-mile record is 335 MPH in less than 4.5 seconds.