Video: John Kolivas On The Southern Speed Dyno – And A Rumor!

It’s rare that we get the opportunity to see one of the sport’s finest spinning the dyno rollers, as many of them are unwilling to let their power numbers come out into the open. That’s exactly the case here – drag radial superstar John Kolivas makes a hit on the dyno at Wade Hopkins’ Southern Speed facility in Tupelo, Mississippi, and we can’t see the dyno screen at all. What we can see, though, is the one thing that should open the eyes of all of the players in one particular class – the NMRA’s Street Outlaw class.

kolivasIt appears that hanging off the nose of Kolivas’ Bennett Racing-powered Cobra is not the typical pair of turbos we’ve seen on the car for eighth-mile racing; rather, there’s just one large single turbo, and that can mean only one thing – that Kolivas is gunning for the boys in his former stomping grounds. Prior to becoming the world record holder on the 275-wide tire as he is today, Kolivas and crew chief Jeff Reed decimated the NMRA’s Drag Radial class, and in the years since he’s made sporadic visits to the NMRA when it fit into his schedule of racing Outlaw Radial eighth-mile events across the South.

We chatted with him a few weeks ago and he hinted that something big was in the works for his team – maybe this is the something big? One can only hope, as the NMRA’s Street Outlaw class put on a hell of a show at their recent event in Maryland, with nearly all combinations into the 7-teens and Sean Ashe crushing it on a test pass on Sunday with an astounding 7.03. As the Street Outlaw class has exceeded everyone’s expectations already, having the Iceman add his two cents into the mix can only improve the potential for growth in the class for the future. Since Johnny K doesn’t usually make a move until he’s sure it’ll be worth his time and effort, we can only infer one thing from this video.

Then again, there could be two turbos on the front of the car, and the grainy quality of what appears to be cell-phone video makes it look like there’s only one turbo, and we’ve done a lot of typing for nothing. You be the judge.

About the author

Jason Reiss

Jason draws on over 15 years of experience in the automotive publishing industry, and collaborates with many of the industry's movers and shakers to create compelling technical articles and high-quality race coverage.
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