“Turbo Todd” Moyer, one of the pioneering pilots of the turbocharged revolution almost thirty years ago, started in 2024, exactly where he stopped at the end of 2023. The Texas terror unleashed the power of his twin-turbo’d 2014 Camaro during the “no rules” testing session, which annually precedes the U.S. Street Nationals Pro Modified slugfest at Bradenton Motorsports Park in Bradenton, Fla.
Still campaigning the same blue machine powered by the experimental Hemi engine created by Carl Stevens, Jr., of XRE Racing Engines, Moyer spent the first day of the test session working on sixty-feet and three hundred thirty-feet elapsed times before making a full run to the eighth-mile late on Tuesday, January 23, 2024. After working on the car all day, the team only took one shot at the current turbocharged Pro Modified World Records (3.527 seconds by Jose Gonzalez set at Dinwiddie, VA, on October 23, 2015, and 231.44 mph recorded by Kevin Fiscus at Dunn, NC, on April 5, 2016), and their solitary attempt was, quite simply, earth-shaking.
The 524-inch machine clocked a brutal 0.939-second 60-footer, a great launch for a turbocharged car but nowhere near a record. The rest of the pass, however, was astounding. Moyer ran a turbo record of 2.418 seconds to the 330 and then destroyed both ends of the eighth-mile records for turbo doorslammers at a staggering 3.492 seconds and 231.83 miles per hour, the speed being the fastest ever achieved by any passenger car over that distance. The ET made Moyer the seventh Pro Mod driver to run quicker than 3.50 seconds in the eighth and the fourth quickest ever to do it.
Notable was the fact Moyer was timed at a slowing 4.488 seconds at one thousand feet, but it was the quarter-mile numbers that dropped jaws around the globe. Coasting across the finish line, Moyer’s Camaro ran 5.488 seconds, (making Moyer the fourth quickest quarter-mile turbo racer ever and the seventh quickest driver of any Pro Mod), at a mere 212.63 mph!
It must be understood the 212 mph shut-off speed is approximately 70 MPH slower than a full-power effort similar to the current record of 278.79 mph (set by Khalid Mohammed in Sakir, Bahrain, on February 28, 2018) or the 5.359-second record posted by Jose Gonzalez in Mark Micke’s twin-turbo’d Camaro only last November 28th at BMP. It’s difficult to determine the possible performance of a full quarter-mile pass if only because the run exceeds all previous “early numbers” for a turbo’d passenger car.
It was the decision of Moyer to shoot for the world records at each progressive point and the eighth-mile effort is a tantalizing hint of what may happen during the rest of the week. The current decision between Moyer and crew chief Stevens is to make a full quarter-mile attempt on Wednesday, January 24.
Despite the fact the testing “week” is competition against the clock with no rules other than those involving safety equipment being observed, most teams immediately wanted to know at what weight the car was running since the car will be required to meet U.S. Street Nationals rules during the event beginning on Friday. The surprising answer came from Stevens immediately after the run.
“To be honest,” Stevens admitted, “I have no idea what the car weighed on the pass. We didn’t go over the scales at all this week, and I’m more concerned with getting it down the track than anything else. We’re still running our 88mm Precision Turbo units and it’s still hooked to an M&M Turbo-Hydro 400 transmission. We made a few changes from when we ran 3.56 at 229 mph late last year but nothing major.”
Attentive fans noted the 3.49 at 231.83 MPH pass came in atmospheric conditions fifteen hundred feet worse than encountered on Gonzalez’s 5.35 at 272 MPH bomb last November. Regardless, Stevens confirmed Moyer’s right foot came off the throttle 3.61 seconds into the run, killing the power around eight hundred feet downtrack.
The question circulating throughout the sport is simple, “How quick and fast can it go?” Stevens shared an interesting angle about the next attempt. “We originally planned to make a second run tonight and go for a full pass,” said Stevens, “but one of Todd’s best crewmembers was flying in tonight, and Todd didn’t want to make the full quarter-mile run without him here to see it.”
Stay tuned.
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