While ProCharger superchargers have and continue to dominate all across the vast spectrum of traditional class racing, from NHRA Pro Modified to No Prep Kings, Top Dragster to Radial versus the World and X275, they have’t quite caught on in grassroots 1/8-mile small-tire no-prep racing, where nitrous and turbos continue to rule the roost. But standout racer Ryan Mitchell is quickly changing that.

Photo by Kaitlyn Ward

Mitchell, a decorated small-tire no-prep racer with countless wins on the street and the strip, recently won the infamous fall edition of War in the Woods no-prep at Indiana’s Brown County Dragway, marking the first major win for his new combination.

When you think of the most wild and sketchy no-prep tracks in the country, you think of Brown County Dragway and War In The Woods. This event has been held at this off-the-grid outlaw track for many years now, and continues to draw crowds from all over the country. Racers and spectators travel for a reputation of this event that has set the no prep game on fire, and a promise that the battle of War In The Woods will always be one to watch. Ryan Mitchell, a now two-time and reigning small-tire champion of the event, said he didn’t want to watch, he was coming to win it all, and so he did.

Ryans love for racing started when he was 16 years old and he acquired the 1987 Pontiac Firebird that is now widely known as The Firebird. You read that correct, the car he races now is the same one he drove to high school in. Since then, Mitchell has made a lot of upgrades to said car, multiple times over, transforming into a pure-bred racecar. He has consistently run turbos on the car for years, but Mitchell said he needed a way to keep up with new breed of racers and race cars, as he believed turbos just weren’t going to continue cutting it in the no-prep world. This last change he made was a big one, and it was what everyone had been waiting to hear more about when he dropped the news.

Ryan Mitchell recently switched his car from a big-block, twin-turbo setup to a 540 cubic-inch, Dart Big M from Muller Performance, with a nasty F-3R-121 ProCharger bolted to the front of the crankshaft.

Over nine long weeks this transition took place, at Mitchells’ KC Maxx Performance, with all the wrenching done by Ryan and his team. During this time The Firebird underwent a series of changes to optimize the new blower combination, such as a new gear drive  and balancer setup, new custom zoomie headers, the addition of a Callies Magnum Crank and Ultra Rods, and JD Pistons, The gear set in his custom D & J transmission was also changed to to a 151-126-10 ratio. A Neal Chance racing converter was added, and ultimately some new tuning strategies were deployed to get the combination dialed in. 

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“Fuel and timing has been the bigger challenges with tuning, other than that it has been a fairly easy learning curve. It makes less power [than the turbos] since it’s all RPM-driven, but it’s all about getting the RPM where you want to create the power you need,” Mitchell explains.

This car will mostly be raced on front-side no-prep events for the time being. Ryan Mitchell said, “This car is meant to go fast, and I hate having to turn it down for other surfaces.” Mitchell said this great combination of parts for the new setup has made it an easier learning curve than expected, and it has been easier to get consistent and smooth results out of the gate.

In the first outing with all of the new changes at Outlaw Armageddon at Thunder Valley Raceway Park in Oklahoma City, the combination showed very promising results and numbers. As Ryan began to learn more on this new combination, it led him to start shredding tenths of a second off of his previous elapsed times, and he set new personal bests at the 330-foot mark, giving him lots of promise in the new program. 

After seeing this, he made a few more changes and headed to Morgantown, Indiana to take his shot at the $27,500 small-tire grand prize at War In The Woods. Earlier this year Mitchell won this exact same event with his old setup, the big-block with twin turbos. This time, though, he threw everyone for a loop…some would say you could call this feeling a shell-shock. Ryan Mitchell was coming in heavy with a vengeance, and everyone who knew who was aware of how the car ran at Armageddon knew it was a player.

“I think a lot of these guys know me as one of the fastest small tire no prep turbo cars, and with the ProCharger making such a statement I think that people will follow,” Mitchell says of the future of the combination.

Ryan and The Firebird worked their way through the field. Ryan drew Nick Tunno in the first round, and the second round was Jamie Satter. The third round draw got interesting, as he pulled Isaac Preston in his potent Frankenstein Corvette. Ryan then drew Justin Reed in Bear Trap in the semifinals, who he beat and set up the final round face-off with event promoter Jeff Thomas and his big-block Nitrous Nova. There, Mitchell’s ProCharger car mooted away from Thomas for the win. Ryan Mitchell is the only racer to ever win War In The Woods small-tire consecutively, and that is a title to hold high.