Photo courtesy Matt Woods Photography

While Drag Week stars Larry Larson, Tom Bailey, and Jeff Lutz have been stealing many of the headlines in street car drag racing over the last handful of years, Englishman Andy Frost has been quietly marching to the beat of his own drum more than 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean with his Red Victor VX4/90 FD Vauxhall. Frost broke the record for street legal, street-driven cars in 2012 and held it until the final day of Drag Week this fall when Larson, in his previously top secret Chevrolet S-10, clicked off a 6.16-second pass, surpassing Frost’s mark of 6.40.

Photo cortesy Ivan and Rose Hughes

Many wondered if Frost, with his ultra-competitive spirit, would or could sit idly by and allow Larson to take his thunder without retaliation. And if you know Frost, the answer to that was a resounding ‘no.’ It was merely a matter of when, not if.

And now, after a couple of months of behind-the-scenes planning, Frost and his Red Victor Racing team have revealed their plans to springboard their performance into the five-second zone and recapture the street legal drag racing record. The new venture is being made possible, in large part, to the backing of a group of 120 dedicated supporters to Frost’s program through the “Red Victor 5-Second Club”. The collective group, along with many longtime sponsors, will help Frost with the financial means to step up every facet of his combination to leave the mid-sixes in the dust.

“We will be upgrading RV3’s powertrain to run in the five second zone to bring back the street legal record back across the Atlantic, where it resided for two and a half years,” said Frost. “Having watched the huge progress in street legal racing that we started back in 2010, we’re happy that there are finally others who have joined us in the street legal car revolution. That’s what makes it exciting to be a part of it and what drives us on to new heights.”

Continued Frost: “The car itself has plenty of potential left, as we didn’t really scratch the surface of the chassis tune up or engine. Track time and weather in this area of the world played it’s part in that. We had fewer runs in one year than our competitors had in one meeting. What we’re lacking for the job at hand, due to the class restrictions we were racing in, is power. This will be now be taken care of in certain areas — namely, the top end of the engine, the turbo size, and the transmission.”

Red Victor 3 will utilize a set of new Race Flow Development spread-port heads paired with a Victory Performance valvetrain combination, including PAC springs, T&D rockers, Manton pushrods, and Jesel lifters, with a Steve Morris Engines billet intake manifold helping to deliver the air into the combustion chamber. Wilson Manifolds will supply the twin 105mm throttle bodies, which will be fed by a pair of Precision Pro Mod GEN2 98mm turbochargers, controlled by Turbosmart blowoff valves and wastegates. The final cubic inch count will remain at 540, with a New Century block, Diamond pistons, a Winberg crank, GRP rods, and a Bullet/Morris camshaft comprising the new long block assembly.

Marc Lamude, who built the original powerplant for the car, has once again been tabbed for the new project. World renowned tuner Shane Tecklenburg, who has had a hand in a long list of world records in the sport, will assist Frost in tuning the car to the planned five-second passes. Frost will have new MoTeC equipment to pair the M800/CDL dash combo, including a MoTeC PDM 30 and MoTeC keypad, to help with the street side, which will allow him switch from pump gas to methanol with a press of a button.

Photo courtesy Ivan and Rose Hughes

A new Turbo 400 transmission housed in a Reid Racing case with a Browell 6.3 bellhousing, all build by Frosty himself and overseen by Hutch Transmissions, will help transfer the power.

Said Frost, “We always wanted to use this transmission combination, but the FIA rules prohibited it when the car was being built. Now that we’re running “outlaw”, it’s our transmission of choice.”

Late summer of 2015 — August or September — has been targeted as the completion date for the project, with shakedown runs at the Santa Pod Raceway in England to follow. Frost will, of course, be out and about near his home in Wolverhampton, England driving the 3,000-plus horsepower machine, as well. Frost isn’t ready to divulge all of his plans at this stage of the game, but once all of the systems are deemed a go, the car will be shipped to a “sunnier destination” to let it all hang out in an effort to reclaim the all-time street legal drag racing elapsed time record.

Frost told us he’ll continue to run his program as he has from the beginning, with nothing more than a change of rear wheels and tires, switch fuels, and add and remove the wheelie bar when going from the street to the strip.

With Larson having already fired his shot with the first and only five-second pass ever recorded by a licensed, insured, and proven street vehicle, and both Bailey and Frost now stockpiling warheads and strategically positioning troops, the street legal game is set to become an all-out war in 2015 the likes of which we’ve never seen before.