Robert Hight stunned the crowd assembled at California’s Sonoma Raceway on Friday night when he clocked the fastest speed in history by a wheel-driven vehicle in 1,000-feet, lighting the boards with an are-you-kidding-me 339.87 mph blast —  the fastest in NHRA history and the first run in excess of 339 mph in Funny Car or Top Fuel. Hight also carded the third quickest elapsed time in Funny Car history in doing so with a 3.807-second shot.

The speed, a mere .13 mph short of 340, places the Funny Car eliminator on the brink of surpassing yet another speed milestone.

Hight and his Jimmy Prock-tuned AAA of Southern California Chevrolet struggled in the opening session, clocking a 4.50 at just 184 mph, but the pair took advantage of a 71 degree air temperature, a track temperature of just 89 degrees, and a corrected altitude of 1,589 feet on their second shot at the Sonoma strip.

“When you mess up the first run and don’t go down the track, you would think you’d put a baseline setup in the car,” said Hight. “When you have Jimmy Prock as your crew chief, he tries to get everything he can out of that race track. When I lifted at the other end of the track, I knew it was fast, and quick, and when I saw out of the corner of my eye, I saw the 3.80, but I didn’t know it went 339 – almost 340 – until they told me on the radio.”

“These things will run 340 mph, we know they can do it,” Hight said. “Man, it came so close tonight. It’s still the fastest ever in the history of the NHRA – that’s pretty cool. This thing was singing down there. It’s hard to explain to everybody, but it’s the coolest noise when you hear that nitro engine running up that kind of rpm.

Hight’s Chevrolet has set top speed at eight races in 2017, and nine of his 10 career fastest runs this season — seven of those occurring since mid-May — thanks in large part to the return of Prock, whose career is littered with such mind-boggling performances.

“That was an awesome run for us,” Prock said. “You know, this place is great. We’re in California. The air comes in at night, and these things make some power.”

“It’s music to your ears. … 340, that’s kind of the magic number,” Hight added. “When you can say you ran the fastest speed in NHRA history, that’s pretty awesome. And Sonoma Raceway can say it happened here.”

Photo by Marc Gewertz/NHRA