When we last saw him, Sean Lyon was tearing up X275 and NMRA competition, but he’s been missing in action for a little while now. That’s all about to change, as Lyon’s brand-new 25.3-spec Mike Duffy Race Cars-built machine is striding towards the finish line for completion. The restaurant owner from Florida has had the Duffy team hard at work on the car over the last year and a half, and it’s about three months out from making its debut on the track.

“I started building this car before I sold the old one. It just got out of the paint shop, where it was for six months. These new cars you have to paint the cage, then weld the roof back on, then do the bodywork and get them ready, it’s a huge undertaking. It’s starting to go back together now. We’ll be running a turbo from Precision, although I’m not sure if it will be an 88mm or 85mm yet. We might pick the 85 just to be able to take advantage of the weight break. X275 has turned into what NMRA used to be – you go to the big races, it’s past the local man’s level,” says Lyon.

The Ford Windsor-based powerplant will be from Lyon’s longtime friend and sponsor Mark Biddle of Panhandle Performance. Billet cylinder heads will be on top along with an intake manifold from Marcella Manifolds, while transmission duties will be handled by a Turbo400 unit from Proformance Racing Transmissions. The car was designed to be versatile and raced at many different venues from X275 to the NMRA’s Street Outlaw class. An extreme focus on weight savings was kept at the forefront throughout the build process, and to that end the body’s weight was kept to a minimum with body parts from Dan Schoneck at Schoneck Composites.

Lyon is also teaming up with the guys at MoTec on one of their engine management systems, which he feels are the state of the art for X275 competition. He explains, “Mark will be tuning the car, and we’ll be getting some help from the guys at MoTec in the beginning. Once Mike is done with it, it has to go off to MoTec to have the wire harness built. It’s probably going to be another three months or so until it’s ready.”

“It’s just Mark and I going to the track unless we can get some of our buddies to come and help. And now that our kids are coming of age, we’ll be taking our families along when possible. I’m so busy at work, if we can get to six big races a year, it justifies having it. One thing’s for sure, I can say it took a lot of grouper sandwiches to come up with the money to build it. We’re gonna come out swinging, and it’s gonna be awesome,” he says. 

Lyon’s old car was a super-clean work of art, and this one appears even more incredible. We can’t wait to see it in competition!