RACER SPOTLIGHT
PRESENTED BY WISECO
only was it the first small-tire car in the region
to break the 3-second barrier, posting 3.92 at
202 mph, the RC F won every single race in
the Super Street V8 class in the Bahrain Drag
Racing Championships (BDRC).
And that success continues with Pharris at
the helm. “I knew I wanted to run this Limited
Drag Radial class, so I planned on building a
car,” he explains. “But then this RC F came up
for grabs, and it was right within the rule set for
the class, and I thought, ‘well here’s my chance
to get going right away.’ Normally you see cars
being exported from the States to the Middle
East for racing, but in this case, it was the other
way around.”
Once the car landed stateside, the team wast-
ed no time getting the car back into competition.
“We unloaded it off the container, moved the
seat back and took it to a racetrack,” Pharris
explains. “I made the first pass with it and I
was like two numbers off the world record, and
we won the race with it the first weekend out.”
The team went on to dominate Limited Drag
Radial in 2018, taking home the championship
after winning five out of the seven races that the
car competed in (and taking runner-up at one
of the two races that they didn’t win).
The 3,300-pound RC F (per class rules) gets
its motivation from a Pro Line Racing all-alu-
minum Stage 4 481X engine paired up with
Precision 88mm turbos, a combination good
for about 3,800 horsepower. While big power
and significant weight can put engine internals
through the ringer, Pharris says their current
setup is up to the task.
“With some of the brands of pistons we’ve
used in the past, we’ve seen some cracking – we
run these things pretty hard because we have
to, it’s a really competitive class,” Pharris says.
“What we’ve seen is that playing with compres-
sion numbers is key, especially when you’re lim-
ited to a certain amount of boost. I approached
Wiseco because I knew they’d be willing to work
with us to put something together that would
perform under these circumstances. Feedback
is hugely important, and I knew they’d listen
to what we had to say to help further develop
the design. We’re not easy on parts, but Wiseco
stepped up and we’ve had really good luck with
the piston so far.”
Coming off a championship-winning season,
Pharris is looking to build on that success and
take things a step further with the RC F. “We saw
at Lights Out 10 that everyone is really starting
to step up their programs,” he notes. “We’re go-
ing to focus on getting all the power we can out
of this engine and fine-tuning the package to
eke out every bit of efficiency that we can. The
class record is a 4.09, but I think we’re going
to knock that out of the park pretty soon here.”
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I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com