Last weekend’s PDRA Mid-Atlantic Showdown saw the competition debut of Dave Mancini’s 1968 Pontiac GTO in the Super Street class at Virginia Motorsports Park. Derek Mota was behind the wheel of the iconic muscle car.

Mancini’s GTO is the real-deal, and a car he has had since high school. It’s spent most of its life on the street, and when it needed to have the carburetor tuned, he met Mota at his shop, Mota Racing and Fabrication in Danvers, Massachusetts. Over the years, Mota has modified the Pontiac, but Mancini was inspired by Mota’s X275 ride and the duo decided to take the Goat to a completely different level with this version of it.

Looking at the rules package for the Super Street category, there were plenty of powertrain options, but Mancini wanted to keep it Pontiac-powered, as the car is a legit GTO, so he enlisted the services of BES Racing Engines to build a formidable 470 cubic-inch Pontiac powerplant.

Mota’s shop handled nearly all of the fabrication, save for the roll cage done by Jeff Sacfide, and that included plumbing the hot-side exhaust headers to funnel the exhaust gasses to the Harts Turbo 88mm turbocharger.

Joining the team on the tuning side is none other than Jamie Miller, who will be working the FuelTech FT600 fuel injection that manages the FuelTech 720 lb/hr injectors, FT Spark, and CDI racing ignition coils.

Backing up the Pontiac mill is an Extreme Automatics-built two-speed Turbo 400 transmission that is coupled with a torque converter from Neal Chance Racing Converters. The car’s original suspension is long gone and has been converted to a four-link suspension design that uses Menscer Motorsports shocks to control the Tin Soldier Race Cars-built, 9-inch rearend. For the Super Street class, the team runs a 28×105 non-W tire per the rules.

“We weren’t sure on what class,” said Mota. “Maybe no-time racing, but then we saw the PDRA Super Street class and Jamie Miller said he would already be at those events tuning Ken Quartuccio’s car.” Regarding Mota taking over the driving duties, he said “Dave has a busy family life. I was going to be testing it anyways and Dave has never driven a race car before. The fastest he’s ever been before was 10.90.” With this new version, Mota is expecting elapsed times in the 6.40-6.50 range through the 1/4-mile and 4-teens to 4.20s to the eighth.

“It made just over 2,000 horsepower on the dyno at Bootleg Dyno Tuning,” Mota told us. “There’s definitely a learning curve with this much power and a small tire, but this is what we have the red hat guy for.”

Mota said that they have 5-6 passes on the car now, but after the second pass of the first test day, he knew they had something. “Seeing what the class is running, we feel we have a front-runner car. It shows real good potential.”

Photo courtesy PDRA

In the team’s debut, Mota qualified fourth with a 4.86, and then stepped up the performance in eliminations, clocking a 4.73 in the opening round, a 4.74 in round two, and a 4.72 in the semifinals to punch his way into the money round. Mota was to face Paul Curry for the title, but when Curry could not get his car to fire in the allotted time, Mota was granted a solo victory lap, a 4.88 at a slowing 158 mph.