Big-show nitro racing veterans Richard Hartman and Tim Wilkerson made history this weekend at the Funny Car Chaos “Nitro Madness” season opener at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas, clocking the first 4-second and 300 mph pass by a AA/Fuel Altered.

Photo courtesy Steven Wilson Motorsports Photography

Hartman, a former professional Funny Car pilot who now calls the shots on Wilkerson’s Levi, Ray & Shoup Inc. Funny Car, climbed behind the wheel of the nitro-burning altered that he and his boss assembled a handful of seasons ago with the intent of knocking down two long-standing barriers. The car, a chassis that Wilkerson previously vied for an NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series title with, is effectively a fuel Funny Car without a body — a supercharged Hemi with dual magnetos and dual fuel pumps, the 11,000 horsepower machine only differs through its use of large dragster-style canard wings front and rear.

Hartman and Wilkerson had last shaken down the Summit Racing Equipment-backed altered following national events in late 2018, but the rust didn’t show in Ennis when Hartman stormed to a history-making 4.920 at a slowing 296.13 mph on Friday evening. In one fell swoop, Hartman obliterated the existing 5.286-second world record for fuel altereds, set by Joe Haas in 2013. 

“It was real fast…the quickest I’ve ever been,” Hartman said. “I have been faster, but if I would have held the throttle down, that might have been my fastest run, too. I shut it off a couple tenths early. It left really strong and bobbled the front end about half track and hooked up and took off. It was a heck of a ride…a lot of fun. A dream come true.”

“From the back it looked pretty cool,” Wilkerson said after clocking the first “four” on Friday. “Richard built the whole thing, so that’s what’s cool about it. It’s one of my old Funny Cars, and he had that old body and he came up to me one day and said, ‘hey we want to build a fuel altered, are you interested?’ And I said, ‘well I’ve got a chassis,’ so we’ve had a good time with it. It’s been sitting for three years and we haven’t ran it for a long time. But this was an opportunity to bring it somewhere the track was going to be good, and we didn’t have anything else to do, right? I was elated…you’d have thought I won Indy. I had so much fun out there I couldn’t stand it. I was screaming on the radio to Richard and I don’t know if he could even hear me.”

“I heard the screaming,” Hartman responded. “I started to get a little excited and then remembered I have to actually turn the car off and slow down and shut everything off properly. I had only pulled one parachute for some reason, and so it was moving down there pretty quick. But as soon as I got around the corner I got on the radio and started yelling and hollering. It was a good time, it was a lot of fun, and we’re real excited, That’s what we came here for, to maybe have a chance at something that’s never been done, and we did it.”

“First in the fours, that’s pretty cool,” Wilkerson added. 

But they weren’t done there. 

With half the record book re-written, Hartman turned around on Saturday and completed the mission, impressively enough, repeating his elapsed time to the thousandth — 4.920-seconds — and legging through the 1,320-foot mark to a 304.53 mph terminal speed. Like the elapsed time mark, Hartman well exceeded the 286.07 mph record that Ron Fassl had held since 2005.