Spiny Norman said:

Spiny Norman said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

So that’s about 5g acceleration for the first half sec.

How do they transmit the required force to the ground without slipping?

The huge rear tyres are only pressurised to about 7.5 psi and act like huge springs to absorb a lot of the energy as the car launches. As the car accelerates that spring effect fades. The chassis is also designed to bend so it looks a bit like a coat hanger and that too helps keep traction.
The track they run on it not like a normal road, it’s special ‘hot mix’ bitumen and it’s coated with a stick covering. When it’s hot, people have been know to have their shoes stick to it.
The cars also do a burn-out, which warms the tyres and that increases their coefficient of friction substantially.

I forgot to mention that the big rear wing starts to generate quite a lot of downforce (over 2 tonnes) so as the car accelerates the tyres can transmit more power.
The other very important thing they do it have a very special & clever clutch that’s designed to slip at varying rates over a couple of seconds. They usually have six plates and each plate is engaged one at a time after the launch. So off the line that first plate slips a fair bit, then shortly after the 2nd plate starts to bite and the slippage decreases.
If they didn’t have that the cars would be undrivable. Any touch of the throttle would result in uncontrollable wheelspin.
FWIW the rear tyres are spinning faster than the car is moving for the entire run. I think at the end of the run they’d be down to makyve 5% – 10% slip though.

Thanks Mr. S :)