Larry Larson dips into the fives

24 November, 2014

Following up on his street-legal Chevrolet S10’s overwhelming success during the 2014 Hot Rod Drag Week, where he ran a 6.16 at 219.61mph, beating Andy Frost’s 6.403 at 229.31mph, Larry Larson has gone one step further and dipped into the fives — a 5.950 at 244.43mph, to be exact.


Larry Larson achieves a 5.950 at 244.43mph during 2014 Hot Rod Drag Week

Larry Larson achieves a 5.950 at 244.43mph during 2014 Hot Rod Drag Week

At the Las Vegas-based Street Car Super Nationals, the team had managed to iron out the ignition issues bothering them earlier on — that 6.16 was run with the engine lacking top end.

On the Friday morning, November 21, the team ran a 6.058 at 241.50mph, which was bettered that evening as they ran a 6.043 at 242.67mph. Heading into Sunday morning at number 10 in the Outlaw ProMod class, the team would go on to run their first five-second pass in the wild Chevy S10, becoming the world’s fastest street-legal car for the third time during the course of the event.

Because the S10 is still a relative unknown for the team, it looks as though there’s a lot more potential in it that is yet to be tapped into. The team hopes for a 5.80 at 250mph and given their recent performance it’s highly likely that we’ll be seeing it sooner rather than later.

Not one to take a challenge lying down, 2013 Drag Week champion Tom Bailey has announced via social media his intent to run a 5.50-second pass, stating, “The goals are simple — 300mph in the standing mile, and [a] 5.50 quarter mile”.

With this much excitement so soon after Drag Week, we can’t wait to see what 2015’s event holds — could we be seeing the world’s first 5.50-second pass in a street-legal car?

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Motorsport Flashback: The Temple of Speed

On the banks of the Lambro River is Europe’s largest enclosed park, all 688 hectares of it. Parco di Monza was commissioned by the son of an Austrian empress as a summer retreat in the late 1700s, but it would be for another century and a half before ground was broken on what would become Italy’s famous theatre of speed at the park’s northern end. One hundred years ago on 3 September, less than four months after work started, Autodromo Nazionale di Monza was officially opened and the first race – appropriately, the Italian Grand Prix – was run a week later. Monza was the world’s third purpose-built circuit, after Brooklands and Indianapolis, and was the result of the Milan Automobile Club financing the 3500 workers who created the super-quick, and consequently dangerous, track that made the word ‘Monza’ synonymous for speed.