The Qatar Al-Anabi Racing Top Fuel team, owned by Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani, is partnering with Texas A&M University at Qatar to provide real-life motorsports experience for students in engineering-related fields.The programme’s first intern, Abdul Wahab, is attending this weekend’s Toyota NHRA SuperNationals in Englishtown, New Jersey, the ninth of 23 races in the 2012 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season.Wahab is shadowing members of the Al-Anabi Racing Team as they perform various duties on the Al-Anabi Top Fuel cars.“The whole experience is so awesome! You can actually feel the roar of an 8,000hp engine at your feet when these cars move,” Wahab said. In addition to gaining an appreciation for the technology and the team’s ability to turn components into power and speed, Wahab is learning the differences between the 8,000hp engine in the NHRA Top Fuel dragster and a generic production engine.“The coolest thing I’ve learned is that the 8,000hp engine work without a cooling system,” Wahab said.Wahab also learned that with the data acquisition system, the parameters are not changed while the car is running, which is different from conventional cars where the parameters change and adapt to the environment. Al-Anabi Racing team manager Alan Johnson said that seeing Wahab make the connection between what he has learned about engineering in the classroom and how it is applied to motorsports technology has been gratifying.“Our internship programme with Texas A&M and Education City in Qatar is the next step in the evolution of our relationship with the nation of Qatar, and we look forward to the future of this important programme,” he explained.The Al-Anabi Racing internship programme is designed to give college students hands-on training in auto design and engineering. They will learn how to effectively combine theory with practical experience in advanced automotive engineering. Interns will spend the majority of their two-week internships working at Alan Johnson Performance Engineering in Santa Maria, California, where engine components are designed and built. In addition, interns will work with Al-Anabi Racing Team personnel during NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series events at race tracks throughout the US, as Wahab is this weekend.Wahab earned his internship as one of the top two students in the Texas A & M engineering programme on the Education City campus.