As a racer and a chassis builder, Larry Larson has a long and impressive list of accomplishments on his resume, but on Monday morning, he garnered another accolade and further grew to his legend when he drove the world’s quickest and fastest street legal vehicle to victory in Top Sportsman at the NHRA Kansas Nationals at the Heartland Park Topeka.

With Heartland Park situated less than 100 miles from his Oak Grove, Missouri home, Larson took the opportunity to stretch the legs of his world famous twin-turbocharged Chevrolet S-10, entering the truck in the fast bracket racing category. Larson was, not surprisingly, the No. 1 qualifier by a good margin, pacing the 26-car field with a 6.29 at 228 mph, and he only ratcheted up the performance from there — an advantage in his favor that forced his opponents to change their finish line tactics as he rocketed by at 240 mph. If that weren’t enough to get in their heads, Larson driving his truck to the staging lanes under its own power like the street car that it is certainly had to.

Larson made it though the first three rounds unscathed, although he thwarted disaster in the quarterfinals when opponent Greg Porter shot over into his lane and crashed hard into the wall. He then turned around and dropped a perfect reaction time — yes a perfect .000 light! — on Benjamin Board in the semis to move into the final. There, the brute top end speed played to Larsons’ advantage and against opponent Sean Dodd — Dodd strapped a huge .002 to .103 advantage on Larry out of the gate, but with a 52 mph difference at the stripe, Dodd never saw the truck coming and powered it out the back gate, running under his dial-in and handing Larson the very popular 6.17-second, 240.08 mph victory.

Photo credit: Larson Race Cars

Larsons’ victory marked his first NHRA national event triumph, and very likely the first Top Sportsman win by a street legal vehicle. It also had to be among the quickest vehicles to ever actually win a Top Sportsman race, although we’d have to go to the statisticians on that one. Nevertheless, the five-time Drag Week champions’ lore became ever-greater with his impressive victory, proving to the world yet again that there truly are no bounds to what can be done with a real, died-in-the-wool street car.