Successful nitro racing privateer Dom Lagana recorded the fastest speed in Top Fuel history and clocked one of, if not the quickest quarter-mile elapsed times in the United States since the institution of the 1,000-foot era in 2008 on Saturday evening at the U.S. 131 Motorsports Park’s Funny Car Nationals.
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Not operating under NHRA national event regulations or track sanctioning, Lagana drove his family-owned “Nitro Ninja” ‘digger all the way to the boards — just as God and Wally Parks intended it — for the crowd on hand at the Martin, Michigan strip, clocking a stunning 4.485-second pass at 338.35 mph. The run, unsurprisingly, reset both ends of the U.S. 131 track record and was the talk of the town this weekend. Lagana went a stout .840 to the 60-foot clocks, 3.079 at 281.25 mph to the eighth-mile, and a 3.831 at 323.28 mph mph to 1,000-feet on his way to the staggering numbers that, to date, only the NHRA fuel Funny Cars have achieved thus far over the 1,000-foot distance.
Tony Schumacher held the previous quarter-mile speed standard for 12 years — a 337.58 mph blast at Brainerd in 2005.
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For the sake of conversation, with Top Fuel cars now making frequent trips into the 3.60’s in 1,000-feet, one can conservatively estimate and extrapolate from Lagana’s numbers the kind of performances a team could now achieve in quality conditions to the quarter-mile. Mid-4.30’s are certainly a given, and speeds would likely exceed 340 on the regular. Of course, we may never truly know, unless teams like the Lagana’s continue to push the envelope for the sake of history and a good show.
Congrats to the Lagana’s, and hopefully this isn’t the last of their full pulls.
Video credit: Drag Strip Riot [3]