Despite quicker and faster performance marks by his boosted counter-
parts, Chad Green and his Pat Musi-tuned-and-powered ‘18 Camaro have
held their own against the supercharged and turbocharged entries in the
NHRA Pro Mod Series. Musi wonders how long that will last, though, as the
nitrous cars struggle to gain ground on the bottles vs. boosted battlefield.
Earlier this year, Jackson tuned Marcus Birt’s Radial vs. the World ’16
Corvette to the quickest eighth-mile pass for a nitrous car, a 3.604-second
blast at Sweet 16 2.0 in mid-March.
The following responses have been edited for clarity and conciseness.
At the time when we saw the first 5-second nitrous Pro Mod quarter-mile
pass in 2008, people were saying that was the peak of nitrous racing. Did you
ever imagine near-5.60s and 3.60s in the eighth mile would ever be possible?
Chris Bell: We thought those would come, but probably not as quickly
it’s evolved in the last two years. It seems like the last two years the ETs
have dropped dramatically, especially in radial racing. They’ve seen a lot of
rapid development, but we’ve seen the same in PDRA with the Pro Nitrous
cars going low 3.60s and us just knocking on the 5.60s in the NHRA cars.
It’s been a lot of money spent. It seems like whenever a car goes up there
and runs fast – let’s just say a turbo car or blower car goes up there and
runs 5.60s – well, then everybody wants to try to run 5.60s, so you just
throw money at it. The more you throw money at it, the faster it evolves.
Brandon Switzer: I don’t know that they’ve really advanced any quicker
than they have in the past. I’d have to go back and look, but it seems like
it’s staying on a predictable path. If you take when we went 195 to when
we first went 200, the amount of time that took, or the time from the first
3.79 to the first 3.69, I would say I don’t think the rate of progression has
changed much.
Stevie Jackson: Pro Nitrous, and nitrous racing in general, has pro-
gressed incredible quickly over the last couple years. Runs that were thought
of as moonshot runs a few years ago, like 3.60s, are a regular occurrence
now. That shows the leading edge of technology that continues to develop.
My first car was a nitrous car and when I swapped over to boosted, I was
convinced that nitrous racing was dead. Well, then we started Pro Nitrous
May 2019
racing in ‘12 and ‘13. We won the Pro Nitrous world championship and
it was really cool. The way that it kept moving forward made it ultra, ul-
tra-competitive. It used to not be competitive like it is now. Now it’s just
like NHRA Pro Mod and Pro Stock – very tight fields.
With that said, I don’t think we’ve reached nearly the end of what these
things will run. When we went 3.60 with Marcus Birt’s car on drag radials,
that was the eighth time we lined the car up. Not to sounds snooty, but
I don’t think any of the classes that allow that type of engine and power-
train are running near as well as they can. I think NHRA Pro Mod to Pro
Nitrous to drag radial all can run much faster than what they’re running.
What pieces of technology led to the performance advancements over the
last decade or so? Was it electronic fuel injection (EFI), engine size, lockup
torque converters, car setup, shocks? All of the above?
Jay Cox: Man, to be honest, there’s probably three major factors that
stick out in my mind. Number one is probably the track prep. I was just
coming into this when track prep was ramping up. You figure in 2008-
2010, you show up at a track, if they had a flat drag and a four-wheeler
with a sprayer on it, they had something. Now the track prep has gone to
a whole entire ‘nother level and it’s like where they specialize in prepping
a track. And they don’t get there on Thursday to prep a track for Friday.
They get there on Monday to fix a track for Friday.
Number two is the R&D with these engines. They’ve always made really
good power, but now since they’ve got a cap on the bore space and a cap
on the size, instead of somebody going out there and building the next
biggest cubic-inch motor, now (the engine builders) have had to say, “OK,
let’s see what we can do better with the piston and rod combination or the
cylinder head or manifold.” I think the track prep and the engine R&D go
hand-in-hand. Those two are probably the two biggest things.
The third thing is – by far, I think – the driveline: the transmission, the
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