THE SIX "OH" MY
The quickest nitrous run of qualifying (a 6.168) was not the talk of
the weekend. The talk was largely centered around a testing lap two
days before the event.
“The Iceman” piloted teammate Mike Castellana’s brand new Jerry Haas-built ’07 Western Beef Mustang to a 6.080, 231 MPH blast in the heat of the day.
Once again, Shannon Jenkins and the Awesome Motorsports team have given hope to
nitrous fans everywhere. After countless hours of off season research and
development and testing throughout the beginning of the season, Jenkins uncorked
the first 6.0-second nitrous pass in history while testing at the newly
resurfaced Darlington Dragway on Wednesday.
“The Iceman” piloted teammate
Mike Castellana’s brand new Jerry Haas-built ’07 Western Beef Mustang to a
6.080, 231 MPH blast in the heat of the day.
“Everything went super. It
felt real good,” allowed Jenkins, always a man of few words. What makes the
achievement even more impressive is the fact that Awesome Motorsports is
campaigning two brand new racecars, powered by brand new Reher-Morrison engines.
Jenkins and crew have gone from struggling with the new equipment bugs to
recording the quickest nitrous pass in history in just a matter of
weeks.
A contributing factor in the turnaround was the assistance of
veteran tuner/driver and Roy Hill’s Drag Racing School instructor Mike Bell. The
current ADRL Pro Extreme points leader lent his chassis tuning expertise to the
team, and the results speak for themselves.
One man that was happy to
receive the news via a phone call from Jenkins was chassis builder Jerry Haas.
“I’m elated. When I got the call and he told us what he ran, everybody in the
shop was doing cartwheels,” said Haas. “For him to take one of our cars and do
that just makes us really happy.”
Another person happy to see the team’s
progress is David Reher of Reher-Morrison. “David is on top of this engine
program,” Jenkins said. “He’s just as interested in seeing these things run fast
as Jerry and I are.”
Of course, running that elapsed time during testing
and running it during a national event are two different stories. However, the
track and weather conditions should be favorable for a repeat
performance.
“Oh yeah, we definitely want to run that well here. I think
we can do it again,” added Jenkins.
“Everything is working out great,”
Shannon said. “This is why we made all the moves we did. We knew they would be
positive, and it’s turning out that way.”
After Friday night’s first
qualifying session, Castellana’s Raging Bull Mustang sits in the number two
spot, posting a 6.185, 227.57 MPH lap to pace all nitrous entries. Jenkins’ GTO
ran into tire shake early and coasted to a 12.115 elapsed time.