The world of street-legal drag racing saw some amazing runs over at the NMRA world finals held in Bowling Green Kentucky recently and we saw some new records as old ones fell. The world record for the 5.0 liter Coyote engine was reset several times over the weekend. The first shot was fired by Justin Burcham of Justin’s Performance Center in his Diablosport CMR-Tuned 2011 Ford Mustang with a new 5.0 liter Coyote and 76 mm turbo, ticking off an ET of 8.16 at 166 mph. Saturday saw other cars trying to catch up during qualifying, and it looked like Sunday’s race day was going to be a good one. That was not to be unfortunately, as rain came in and canceled Sunday’s eliminations which postponed racing until Monday. When the rain moved out Monday morning, cool weather moved in, and it looked like it was to be a day of more World Record runs. Justin advanced through the competition until starting issues with the car prevented him from staging at the call for the semifinals, and to add insult to injury, his World Record 8.16-second pass was eclipsed by another competitor’s 8.08-second ET. Not to be outdone, his crew thrashed to cure the starting issue and get the car on the track and reclaim the record for Justin’s Performance Center with an 8.02 ET pass at 170 mph. Most impressive about the runs is they were in a car weighing 3450 lbs. and shod with a 275 mm drag radial. This just proves what can be accomplished by the skilled tuners and Diablosport’s excellent tuning software.
Update: October 21, 2013
Last week (see story above) Justin Bercham from JPC performance based in Maryland set a new quarter mile record for the 2011+ Mustang 5.0 with an 8.02 second pass at 170 mph at the NMRA Finals in Bowling Green, KY. At that time we realized it would not be long before someone would break into the seven second zone, well guess what someone already di d and it was Justin again! The Maryland based shop took the car out to their home track, Maryland International Raceway, earlier this week with a few tweaks, and owner and driver Justin Burcham dropped a 7.94 ET at 172.8 mph on the very first run. Burcham says he used the same setup as he did at the NMRA event last week – 17 psi from the single Precision 76mm turbocharger – with the exception of a freshened transmission. Amazingly, he thinks the car still has quite a bit of performance left in it and believes it will go even faster.
