I
’ve always had a thing for
this car,” says Daniel Pharris. “It’s
different, and I’ve always been the
type to want something that’s a bit
unusual. I don’t want to be that guy
in the crowd with a red ’69 Camaro.”
Pharris says that his penchant for
avoiding the beaten path goes all the
way back to his early interest in mo-
torsport. “I don’t come from a racing household
– I’m really the only one in the family who has
ever done this stuff. They all kind of look at me
like I’m nuts.”
Like many gearheads, Pharris’ interest in per-
formance dates back to high school. “All my
buddies had fast cars, and I felt like I needed to
have one too,” he says. He eventually snatched up
a big-block ’68 Chevelle, which he bracket-raced
regularly at Sikeston Drag Strip in Missouri. “I
live about a mile from there, so I could just drive
down to the track with open headers whenever
I wanted to and go race.”
When Sikeston started hosting occasional
heads-up drag radial events, Pharris took no-
tice. “It piqued my interest a bit – I thought it
might be cool to build a more potent motor for
the car, maybe put some nitrous on it, and see
what I could do.”
So that’s exactly what he did, and he quickly
caught the bug for radial racing, traveling to
various events while chasing the local points
series. “It was called Cheap Street – basically a
small-block, nitrous, 275 drag radial format,” he
notes. “I ran a ’72 Nova in that class, and that
became the car that people around here kind of
knew me for. We ran that for a year or two, and
then I started thinking it would cool to have a
turbo car, so I bought a turn-key ’95 Mustang
and started doing some X275 events.”
After campaigning the Mustang for a few
years, Pharris decided he wanted to step up
his game even further. “I wanted to go faster
– I mean, who doesn’t? So we bought another
SN-95 Mustang that we converted over to a
twin-turbo 481X setup, and we ran some Radial
vs. the World events with that one.”
These days Pharris campaigns a Mustang
GT350 in both Pro Mod and Radial vs. the
World events. “It’s not easy to make a car work
for both formats, but we’ve had some success
with our approach, so that’s been pretty cool.”
But his latest acquisition might be the coolest
– and most unlikely – yet. “And now with the
Lexus RC F, we’re running the Limited Drag
Radial points series.” A Lexus badge might be
an unlikely sight in radial racing, but after you
consider the coupe’s Mustang-like dimensions
(as well as the factory availability of a 5.0-liter
V8), it’s not much of a stretch to look at the RC
F as a Japanese interpretation of a muscle car.
The RC F had already been on Pharris’ radar
for some time, as Ekanoo Racing – the team
who campaigned the machine originally – had
established the Lexus as the quickest and fastest
Super Street V8 car in the Middle East. Not
May 2019
DragIllustrated.com
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