How do the four forces of Gravity, Lift, Thrust and Drag affect the design of a dragster?
Gravity; how much mass is required in the car to keep it on the ground. Lift will tend to overcome gravity. You want as light a car as possible because your weight holds you down and back, and becomes part of the drag. Lift; how much down force (negative lift) is required to keep the car on the ground since a light and fast car will tend to leave the ground and take off into the air. So gravity has to be augmented to keep the car grounded. Otherwise your racer would be too heavy and too slow or airborne. We do this with spoilers that are upside down wings and provide down force; a force that holds the car to the road. Thrust; gives it is forward momentum so it is the key component to the dragster’s speed, it has to be as powerful as possible for the engine design to create, but it cannot form an upward vector that exceeds the combination of vectors of the down force and gravity. The thrust is the horsepower of the engines. Drag is what the dragster is fighting against, it wants to slow
