The Gnarliest Funny Car Explosion We’ve Ever Seen

This video has it all, including a “wait for it” moment, followed almost immediately by an “I didn’t see that coming” moment. It has burnouts and flames and loud noises, all crammed into spectacular two minute video from our gearhead brethren Down Under.

These two funny cars, competing at Perth Motorplex in Australia, line up and fire off their supercharged powerplants, then roll to through the burnout box and lay down some nice fresh rubber across the starting line. They back carefully into their tracks, then ease toward the starting line to begin the staging procedure. Carefully, they ease into the lights, pre-staging then staging, before watching the tree drop to green.

As soon as the driver of the car nearest the camera jumps on the loud pedal, things take a terrifying turn for the worse when just a few feet off the line, his engine explodes spectacularly, producing a massive fireball that fills the frame of the camera and sending chucks of shrapnel in every direction, including nearly catching the camera man. The body of the car flips over the back and lands unceremoniously behind the car as the flames thankfully subside almost immediately and the driver brings the battered car to a stop.

Just when you think the fun is over, you notice the car in the other lane approaching the finish line, only to have its engine explode nearly as spectacularly, producing a nasty fireball of its own and absolutely disintegrating the body as the car hauls through the lights to take the win.

Miraculously, both drivers were uninjured and were able to crawl from the wreckage of their cars under their own power. This just goes to show you how amazingly safe these cars are, even in the face of massive explosions, on either end of the track in this case.