Racecar hood flips open midrace - GIF

[Saltfever]

Try it at 128 mph!

Who would have thought a FRONT mounted, yes, . . . a front hinged hood would fly open! Austin Healy’s of the 50’s have the hood hinged at the front and open upward at the base of the windshield. Why worry about a secure latch, after all, the force from the wind would keep it slammed shut right? Wrong! While approaching the lights at Baylands (a drag strip in Fremont Ca) an explosive force suddenly thrust my hood straight up into 128 mph air. Evidently the air coming through the grill pressurized the engine compartment enough to blow the latch. I could see the edge of the track, and knowing it was straight, the only worry was the other guy crossing over in front of me to get to the exit. At that speed you had to brake hard at Baylands to make the 1^st exit. The last exit was the fence at the end. I almost didn’t make it due to a delayed braking response caused by incredulous neurons. Applying the brakes was almost instinctive and immediate. However, not knowing what happened, if I had blown and engine and oiled the tires, I delayed applying serious braking force. At 187 ft/sec, mili seconds count! The hood dropped back down just as I neared the end of the track. Clear memory 58 years later.

BTW, an aluminum, 2020lb car, with a modified SBC can definitely do that speed in the quarter.

[nova_robotics]

[B]While approaching the lights at Baylands (a drag strip in Fremont Ca) an explosive force suddenly thrust my hood straight up into 128 mph air. Evidently the air coming through the grill pressurized the engine compartment enough to blow the latch.

That is genuinely interesting. I would have figured Mr. Bernoulli would pop it up a little bit, like 15 or 20 degrees or something. Very interesting.

[Saltfever]

I agree it seems logical to only crack open a little bit. However, I think it is aerodynamics at play. There is probably some kind of bow-wave coming over the front end and the wave is quite high with a low pressure are directly above the hood area. That low pressure area may be a few feet high. It also could be due to a ratio between the front grill area vs. the hood area. A large volume of pressurized air coming through the grill acting on a rather small hood. It was an extremely strange phenomena because I don't remember the hood dropping down when I slowed significantly. But maybe serious deceleration was holding it open at some point!