Robert Hight and Jimmy Prock.

Both are legends in their own right. One, a masterful racer with a championship and nearly 50 wins under his belt. The other, a nitro whisperer who can tune a machine to do the impossible. Together, they have formed a dangerous duo.

Capable of both record runs – Hight currently owns both the national records for speed and elapsed time with the National Hot Rod Association – and remarkable consistency, the pair have leapt into the favorite position for the Funny Car championship following a win earlier this week at the NHRA Carolina Nationals to kick off the 2017 Countdown to the Championship.

So what has led to this remarkable turn of events? One that has seen Hight qualify in the top three in 11 consecutive races with three wins and two national records? It’s all about the clutch.

“Jimmy (Prock) had never run a six-disc clutch before. He finally went to it at the last race of last season over there at DSR and they didn’t have much luck with it,” Hight said. “When he came over here, we had been running it for a couple years, he looked at all of our data and took what we had and started running with it.

“At the beginning of the year he struggled a little bit, but Jimmy Prock never gives up on anything. He just lives this thing night and day. He wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about it. Now he’s got it where it needs to be and now he realizes that you can utilize more power with this clutch.

“It’s amazing the consistency that we’ve had with it and I think he can only get better. There’s still more out there and Reading will be a place to really test it. He kicks himself for not going to the six-disc a lot sooner.”

Next up on the schedule for the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series is a trip to Maple Grove Raceway, a record-friendly track located in the heart of Pennsylvania. The track has a long history of performance milestones, setting Hight and Prock up perfectly for a shot at new marks in the fastest class in NHRA drag racing.

“I look forward to it because you know that elusive 340 mile per hour run is out there,” said Hight, who holds the current 1,000-foot national record at 3.793 seconds at 339.87 mph. “I know we can get it. We’ve made the first part of the run and different parts of the second. If you put them together it will run over 340. You just have to have the conditions.

“It would be cool to get that barrier. We were the first in the 3.70s this year, so to be the first in the 340s, that is one that is going to stick for a long, long time. And Maple Grove is the perfect place to do that.”