PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
Cynergy Composites
S
ince starting Cynergy Com-
posites in 2001, Tim Hodgins’
standout company has excelled
in producing top, lightweight
Pro Mod bodies. His recent success story
was with the 2015 C7 Corvette Pro Mod
body used by Troy Coughlin and also Bob
Rahaim when he won his first NHRA
Pro Mod race.
But Hodgins now has something new
and improved up his sleeve. Cynergy
Composites has branched well outside
the drag racing world and Hodgins has
done extensive work with aerospace,
military and several other global com-
panies, with it only furthering his passion for
drag racing. Working harder than ever to push
body development forward, including rigorous,
outside-the-box testing, Hodgins has what he
considers some very exciting discoveries.
He talked with Drag Illustrated about the
new body he is preparing to debut, the work that
went into that, how industries outside of drag
racing have helped his body development and
what he considers an exciting future.
You’ve got something very exciting on the ho-
rizon. Can you talk about the new body you’re
about to release and what makes it stand out?
I have taken my popular C7 Corvette body and
completely redesigned it to make it better. It’s a
highly competitive sport and I have listened to all
the feedback from our customers about what they
would like to see changed. I’ve basically made a
new and improved version of what’s going to be
a 2017 Z06 Corvette Pro Mod body. Because I
developed the whole car in 3D Auto CAD, it gives
me the ability to do a proper, computer-simulated
aerodynamic analysis within the computer.
After bringing all the C7 molds back to Cynergy
from Tim McAmis’ shop, I spent a lot of time over
the winter putting the C7 body through virtual
wind tunnel tests, and we learned pretty quickly
that there was a lot of opportunity to make the
body more efficient, to make it more stable, and to
make it more drivable. What we came away with
is a solid baseline and a deeper understanding of
what these guys need from their race car. The data
made it clear that changing the nose back to the
factory styling would make the car easier to drive
and we needed to make the biggest changes on
the back end of the car. We kept dropping the rear
spoiler and the rear deck inside of the car, and
we kept doing it in a creative way to maintain the
styling, and we made the car 13.75-percent more
aerodynamically efficient at 250 mph. That’s a
lot. I was thinking we can get 2-4 percent and we
ended up getting almost 14 percent. And it takes
90 horsepower less to push this body at 250 mph.
So, again, that’s a lot.
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I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
I didn’t want to make any changes to that body
unless it was calculated. I didn’t want to make
changes because I “thought” it was the right thing
to do, only when I “knew” it was the right thing
to do.
It’s certainly an arduous process to put to-
gether a new body style with the goal to sell
a great deal of them. But as you’re pouring
in resou