ZZP Drag Cars Shooting for Records
While the 2018 racing season is still heating up, ZZP’s drag race team is planning on setting some speed and time records with their builds.
Five-year ZZP racer Kyle Dewey, driving the Polaris Slingshot with our turbo kit, said experience so far at the track has been good but could be better.
“Basically, we need to get better at launching out of the hole and getting a faster time down the track,”
Kyle said his goal for the end of the season is going to be to have the fastest manual transmission Slingshot and he’s not far from getting there. At the last Test and Tune event held earlier this month, the Slingshot completed the quarter-mile stretch at US 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Michigan in 12.67 seconds at 107 miles per hour. The record currently stands at 11.2 seconds at 116 miles per hour.
“I didn’t hit the numbers that I thought I was going to hit but there really wasn’t a baseline of what we thought we were going to hit because people really haven’t gone out and tested the limits of what we’re doing.”
However, the Slingshot is reaching the limits of its stock parts so that might necessitate us having to put in forged internals, such as adding larger injectors.
“We need to turn up the boost,” he said.
Steve Hickman, who drives one of the 2016 Cadillac ATS-Vs said he ran into some technical difficulties the last time he was on the track but saw great improvements.
The ATS-V managed to finish the quarter-mile in 11.49 seconds at 124 miles per hour. Its record is 10.7 seconds at 103 miles per hour.
“We’re a couple miles per hour short right now, we’re going to be trying some things in the next few weeks and I really hope to be taking that record,” he said.
The difficulty he’s facing is with sixty-footing the car. He said it just doesn’t seem to agree with anything we’re really want to do.
“If I ditch the clutch too hard, it closes the throttle on us. If I slip the clutch too hard, it goes into abuse mode and overall gets angry at me,” he said.
So, Steve is going to make improvements to tires, balancing and power from the engine.
Temperatures in the low 90s and high humidity at the last track event did not provide suitable conditions for a turbo car. Next time he hits the track, Steve hopes to have some better weather and track conditions.
“Hopefully we can get it behind some people next week and lay some good rubber down for us. We need some good footing to get this thing out of the hole,” he said. “Once I can launch under full power, I think we’ll have it.”
For Al McClure, driver of the 2012 Chevy Sonic LT, it’s about getting back in the driver’s seat. After a few years of doing half-mile racing in his personal car, Al is back and he’s gunning for a world record.
“There’s going to be some gains there just in me getting more consistent as a driver. Aside from that, we have all the resources here to do what we do it’s just us coming together as a team to make it happen,” he said.
Al’s last time was 13.87 seconds at 100 miles per hour and his goal for the season is to get the Sonic into the twelves, which would put him beyond the current record of 13.4 seconds at 104 miles per hour, which he hopes to do with just basic bolt-on parts and a bigger turbo.
“We’re pretty confident we can get into the twelves without that,” he said. “There really isn’t a definitive end goal in sight other than just taking it as far as we can.”
One of the big things that Al’s changing before he goes back to the track is putting in a limited slip differential in the transmission, which will allow the car to spin one tire at a time if one of them has less traction.
So, by putting this limited slip differential in will force both tires to turn, that will give Al a lot more traction to come out of the hole because that’s where a lot of the time needs to be made up in our reaching for the world record.
“We have the power at the top and we just need the traction to get out of the hole quicker,” he said.
