The Arabian Drag Racing League’s 2013 season, held at Sheik Khalid bin Hamad Al-Thani’s Qatar Race Club in the Qatar capital city of Doha, is only two races old, and already, enough records have been broken either in testing or official competition to fill the pages of a magazine just like this one. From Pro Extreme to Pro Nitrous and Outlaw 10.5, big numbers have fallen from the sky as many of the top racers from the United States have taken advantage of conditions in the 70’s and 80’s and corrected altitudes often hovering within a couple hundred feet in either direction of seal level to produce some incredible runs.

Alex Hossler was already the leader in the clubhouse following qualifying for the second round of the winter series with his world record lap of 3.544 seconds that edged out some fierce challenges by Von Smith, Frankie Taylor, and Joey Martin, but he and tuner Frank Manzo were anything but finished shredding up the QRC racing surface with their screw-blown Al-Anabi Racing Camaro.

Hossler advanced to the final round in Pro Extreme on Friday evening (about the time we were finishing breakfast or heading to lunch here in the states, depending on your time zone), where he was to square off with teammate Von Smith in his Barwa-backed Camaro. What transpired just seconds after the pair launched off the starting line under the lights was history in the making, as the two accomplished racers uncorked the quickest side-by-side 1/8 mile doorslammer drag race in history. At the stripe, it was Hossler illuminating the scoreboard first, as his newly christened world record pass of 3.534 at 213.27 mph bested Smith’s right-there 3.555 at 212.43 mph.

For now, Hossler and Manzo own the Pro Extreme category, but with the ante being upped on a seemingly daily basis in the Arabian series this winter, no record appears to be safe. The series returns to action this Thursday and Friday with round three, and like the rest of the drag racing world, we’ll have our eyes and ears peeled to the goings-on in the middle east.