Records come part and parcel with competitive motorsports. In some instances, class or series points can be claimed by achieving them, but mostly it’s just about bragging rights. For Atlanta, Georgia’s Colby Davis, the record for the world’s quickest Dodge Charger Hellcat eluded him for some time, but he recently took the top honor at Carolina Dragway.

“Once I bought this car, I knew I had to get back into drag racing,” Davis said of his 2019 Dodge Charger Hellcat.

Davis quickly collected 10-second, then 9-second timeslips and kept his momentum going. In 2020, Davis reset the stock blower/engine/transmission record, which stood for four years. That year, he won seven events over 35 weekends and racing from Virginia to Houston to Florida and everywhere in between, at events such as Street Car Takeover, Speed Addicts, the Modern Hemi Shootout, and his local Import vs the World race in Georgia.

“I started chasing the record at Houston in the Heavyweight division, won it, then went to King of the Hill event racing against every division winner and won that as well, Davis explained. “I told the record holder we were coming after it, and he said ‘good, I could use the competition.’ ”

From there, Davis set about building the car to a higher level.

“With the blower/nitrous combination, we would never be fast enough. I partnered with Jake Sampson to build the 411 stroker. He’s a phenomenal engine builder and I told him, ‘let’s get away from what everyone is doing…tell me how we do that.’ ” Sampson responded and suggested switching over to a Rossler Turbo 400, a PST driveshaft and a billet rear differential to start with.

The FuelTech FT600-managed HEMI powerplant has been fortified with a Winberg crankshaft, Callies Ultra Enforcer connecting rods, Mahle pistons and more. Tuned by Nicholas Performance, the engine is topped with a pair of THITEK G3H Bear Hemi heads, which are pressurized by a pair of Hart’s 76/75 turbochargers. Estimated engine output based on the Charger’s 4,200-lb curb weight is around 2,200 horsepower.

On May 6th, during his second day of 1/4-mile testing, Davis and his Charger clocked a 7.61-second run, just enough to take the record away from former record holder, Zdung Ho and his 7.62. Then later that evening during the Street Car Braggin’ Rights event, Davis drove to the win in the Heavyweight class and reset the record with 7.536 at 181 mph.

“We blew through the converter, but are making a stator change to fix that,” Davis noted. “We also had a lifter sticking, so that’s getting fixed and we are going to put a 9-inch rearend from Innovation Machining Solutions in the car.

We built a pretty good monster,” Davis told us. “We know it can run a low 7.40s, possibly a mid-7.30s. We’re still running at 4,200 pounds for heavyweight division. We could take weight out and run a 7.20” Davis is planning on competing at the Street Car Takeover event at zMax in North Carolina next, and you can follow his exploits on Instagram at dman007hellcat.