During the week, Mark Micke builds transmissions for some of the quickest cars in the land at his M&M Transmissions facility in Jefferson City, Missouri. And on the weekend, he chooses to spend his time sitting behind the wheel of Jason Carter’s incredible 1978 Malibu in race competition, most recently this past weekend at the Shootout At The Springs event held at Holly Springs Dragstrip in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where he was able to crank off an eye-popping 4.25 at 192 MPH in the Outlaw Drag Radial class.

Click the link below to see the pass; Thanks to Motor Mania TV For The Video Coverage

httpv://new.livestream.com/accounts/572122/events/1995562/videos/16962513/player?autoPlay

As we’re seeing more and more often from some of the standout Outlaw 10.5 cars (of which Carter’s is one, having finished third in points last year in NMCA Super Street competition with Eric LaFerriere driving), this weekend the team decided to strap on a set of Mickey Thompson 315/60/15 drag radials and take their shot at the track with the unfamiliar tire. Carter explained, “I’m glad we could make a good show for the fans and help this sport grow even more. Helping the racers with transmission service was our main goal at this radial tire race plus try to learn the tire, which we’ve never raced on before.”

We caught up with Micke just after the race, and he was ecstatic about the team’s performance. “We’ve been running in NMCA trim, and we were able to go a 4.28 on the “W” tire in Atlanta, and we went to Holly Springs just to test on that tire. We went ahead and slapped the radials on it just to see what would happen, and on the second pass with them it went a 4.28 at 181 MPH, and we knew we had something at that point,” he explained.

Normally you’d think switching from one style of tire to the other would require big changes in the chassis tuneup, but Micke assured us that wasn’t the case.

“No real changes – we raised the wheelie bars up real high and made some shock adjustments, and went right back at it. Since I’ve never driven a drag radial car, and the bars were permitted at this event, we left them on the car. We made a couple of aborted runs to see what the tire would take on the starting line, but since we’ve teamed up with Mark Woodruff and his Corvette this year we’ve got some data on his car that we were able to use on the Malibu.

“The air was extremely good, but that gives us the opportunity to go to more events now. Jason’s main focus is on winning the NMCA Super Street championship, but now we’re planning on hitting some Outlaw Drag Radial races. The car’s a player, so we’re going to see what she’s got,” Micke said.

Unfortunately the track surface started to go away, and with limited data to use for making changes, the team went out in the second round. 

The car relies on a Nelson Competition Engines-built big-block Chevy pumped up with a pair of Garrett turbochargers, an M&M Transmissions transmission, Pro Torque converter, and on the insane run, the team carded a 1.15 short time, 2.90 330′ time, and a 4.25 elapsed time at 192.88 MPH – meaning that the machine is making well over 3,000 horsepower and getting it to the ground in supreme fashion.

Not only is the team excelling quickly on the new tire, they also hold the points lead in NMCA Super Street this season, as they’ve already won one race and are in the final round of the yet-to-be-completed Atlanta event. Micke is the 2008 NMRA Pro Street champ behind the wheel of his own Camaro, so as you can see, there’s a whole lot of skill and dedication behind the Carter/Micke program. We look forward to seeing what else they can do this season, both in Super Street and Outlaw Drag Radial competition.