No Joke: New 10,000+ Horsepower Dodge Charger Funny Car Is Born [News]

707 horsepower be damned - this drag racer cranks up the power.

2019 Dodge Charger srt hellcat funny car
NHRA Dodge Charger SRT Funny Car testing in the wind tunnel. [Photo: FCA]

10,000 Horsepower descends on the Mile High City.

More specifically, Dodge is bringing a new Charger Funny Car to the drag strip this weekend. It’s the Mile-High NHRA Nationals, and Don Schumacher Racing brought along a 10,000-plus horsepower weapon. Two-time Funny Car world champion Matt Hagan will race the car this weekend at Bandimere Speedway, just west of Denver, Colorado.

“This new Funny Car body is something that Mopar and Dodge//SRT have put a lot of worth and support behind, from R&D and wind tunnel testing,” Hagan said. To that end, the major body features in this new Charger SRT Hellcat Funny Car includes a new front end, bodysides and burst panel. They relocated the burst panel over the engine compartment to release energy more efficiently. Other changes include the shape of the nose and a new splitter to create more downforce.

2019 Dodge Charger Funny Car
[Photo: FCA]

Inspired for the 2019 Charger Funny Car

The production Hellcat served as a template for the vehicle graphics in this Charger Funny Car. However, this car goes beyond the standard 707 horsepower powerplant you’d find in the production car. Way beyond. This 10,000 horsepower dragster can reach upwards of 330 mph and cover 1,000 feet in less than four seconds, according to Fiat-Chrysler. The process to develop the car started over a year ago at Don Schumacher Motorsports (DSM) in Indianapolis, Indiana. This new dragster replaces the current generation Charger R/T race car introduced in 2015.

The Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) team planned to just run a couple qualifying sessions at Bandimere this weekend. In light of some promising runs at a June NHRA event in Norwalk, Ohio, they’re pushing to run the whole qualifying session and race day as well. “We made four good, solid runs in testing at Norwalk,” Hagan said. “We put the body through a lot of different things and were really, really pleased with it. I really think it’s going to translate over to performance on the race track, and hopefully more win lights in the future.”

Stay tuned to TFLcar.com for more updates! Here are a couple of SRT Hellcat machines drag racing at our test track.