Going below the three-second mark in the 0-62 miles per hour (0-100 kilometers per hour) acceleration is very challenging, yet there are several cars that can achieve that. But doing a quarter-mile run in less than 10 seconds - in a production car - is even more difficult and just a handful of hypercars are capable of achieving it. But how does a quarter-mile run in 3.22 seconds sound like?
Of course, we are not talking about a production car. Not at all - the video at the top of this page features a 28,000-horsepower (20,879-kilowatt) rocket-powered dragster driven by Sammy Miller. If you are unfamiliar with his name, he is still the man who holds the record for the fastest quarter-mile run in history with 3.58 seconds, registered in 1984 at the Santa Pod Raceway.
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But this run is even faster. We don’t know the reasons why this wasn’t registered as the fastest quarter-mile run, but it’s really, really impressive. Performed at the Circuit Zandvoort in the Netherlands, the sprint takes just 3.22 seconds with a terminal speed of 402 miles per hour (647 kilometers per hour). We had to watch the video several times to be able to assimilate what happened.
It’s important to clarify that there’s no evidence during the video that the car indeed hit 402 mph (647 kph) as there’s no footage showing screens with Miller’s performance. However, we read at a few different places about this run and we are confident it’s real.
As for Sammy Miller, he is still regarded as one of the fastest men on the planet with his record drag runs from the 1970s and 1980s. Following a career hiatus between 1995 and 2002, Miller returned to track in 2002 and his last on-track appearance was at the Speedfreaks Ball at Santa Pod Raceway in May 2002. Later that year, in October 2002, he was killed in an incident unrelated to any of his own work. He still holds quarter-mile records in Canada, Denmark, England, Sweden, and Mexico.
Source: Crazy Speed