Photo By BankPower.com

In the drag racing world, it takes a pretty sweet car to get to in the 200mph range in the ¼ mile. Not only is it hard to get the traction you need to hook and make a perfect run, you also need a very powerful lightweight car.

Well Gale Banks is trying to hit the 200mph mark with his ultra slick Banks turbo diesel dragster. The Vehicle is a rail style dragster and is running a 6.6 liter General Motors Duramax diesel engine, and cranks out a whooping 1,300 horse power. When it comes to Diesels dragsters you don’t see too many of them, so it would be a great accomplishment to get this diesel rocket in the 200mph range.

We got our fingers crossed.

Photo By Autoblog.com

They will compete in Speed world Dragstrip for NHRDA’s Desert Diesel Nationals this coming weekend march 6th in Wittman AZ. Their will be many other diesel drag car at the event trying to be the same mph. The Team looks to run a time of low to mid 6 second range. Diesel engines make around the same about of torque as they do horsepower which gives the drive train a lot of abuse.

During testing the banks team turned up the juice after a morning of great runs down the track. The dragster had a great 1000 ft running around 160 mph. The driver shifted into 5th gear and the transmission gave out. The team worked hard trying to rebuild the Trans for the next day of testing. The very next day the transmission failed again in 5th gear almost making it to the 200mph mark finishing the run at 7.17 @ 181.08 mph. The car was on its way to 200mph run with a time of 4.588 run in the 1/8 mile. They are looking to beef up the transmission for this upcoming race. Breaking the Trans with this much torque is not uncommon.

Follow along with the Banks team this weekend at the NHRDA Nationals.