Photo: Rob Cossack, Dragzine

We’ve been charting the course of the racing record on the itty-bitty 275 drag radial for a while now, catching John Kolivas doing the deed not once but twice over the last year with his turbocharged machine – and with the new year barely two months old, those records are now obsolete. David Pearson took to the track this past weekend at South Georgia Motorsports Park during Duck X Productions’s Lights Out V event and raised the bar another couple of notches over Kolivas’ best efforts last year.

Pearson’s Bullet Race Engines’-built small-block Ford carries sponsorship from Wiseco Pistons among others. Also onboard are UPR‘s stock suspension and a ProCharger F-3A-121 supercharger, and he clipped off an amazing 4.24-second elapsed time at 171 MPH. In order to do so, he needed a 1.104 short time and a 2.82 to the 330-foot clocks in the process of setting the mark. 

What’s more, it’s not only the quickest 275 radial eighth-mile pass, it’s also the quickest stock suspension eighth-mile pass and the quickest ProCharger-powered eighth-mile pass on gasoline. The 1993 Mustang runs a Neal Chance torque converter, BigStuff3 engine management system, and Mickey Thompson‘s 275 ET Street Radial Pro tire.

Pearson’s wife, Tracy, handles the tuning with assistance from Mustang Mike Modeste. Pearson ran the 4.24 during the No Time portion of the event and also ran a 4.28 during Radial Vs. The World eliminations, proving it was no fluke. Pearson’s performances continue to improve – he won Outlaw 275 last fall at No Mercy IIII with a 4.42/169MPH blast over the always-tough Phil Hines.

This is an amazing feat, and one that starts off the season for the Outlaw 275 class in style. As these racers continue to raise the bar, one can only imagine just how quick they’ll be by the end of the season. Of course the stellar track conditions at SGMP help the racers to set records like these, but there are other tracks in the country capable of putting down the stick, like Holly Springs, Maryland International Raceway, and Memphis international Raceway, with noted traction expert Tyler Crossnoe at the helm. In fact, Crossnoe is hosting the Outlaw Street Car Reunion at Memphis in March and has promised the racers that the grip they need will be there. 

We can only imagine what the entire class of 275 racers has in store for us fans during the 2014 season. Congratulations to David Pearson, his wife Tracy, and the entire Little Evil team. 

Thanks to Hans Pierre Jr. and Free Life Films for the footage of Pearson’s incredible run.