Following our recent jaunt to Silverstone and WRC's surprise dyno figure of 200BHP for Jane's unmodified post-facelift VR4, I've been having a look at calculationg horsepower from quarter mile figures.
I've found a really useful page with a bunch of equations and calculators (click on the equation to go to the calculator) here.
Using figures from our very own CVR4 League Table, a vehicle + driver weight (non-wouter) of 1600Kg, and the 'Elapsed Time (ET)' method, I get figures like this for engine HP (Sorry Zentac - I don't know how much that teensy tiny FTO weighs!):
SGHOM the Mad (quoted 450BHP) - 358
Valmes The Ruski (Quoted 246BHP) - 281
Naughty Nick Mann (quoted ???BHP) - 265
Sneaky like Snake Spirit (quoted 318BHP) - 238
Heavy H.7 (??std car) - 228
Shy Shooter (??std car 174.5 WHP) - 204
I know there are lots of factors that the equation doesn't take into account, but it makes interesting reading, and suggests that the WRC dyno is probably correct...
Figures are quite different using trap speed though. Whadayathink eh?