Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last couple of days, you’ve probably read or heard about John Stanley’s stunning performance at the Street Car Super Nationals IX over the weekend, as he powered to the quickest elapsed time ever recorded in the history of drag racing by a full-bodied door slammer at 5.644 seconds (as reported in our same day weekend coverage).
Stanley, his legendary father, Camp, and the whole Stanley & Weiss gang made the Long (with a capital “L”) trek from their Maryland home to Las Vegas to take on the best that the west coast has to offer in the Outlaw Pro Modified division and, perhaps, make some history in the process. You see, the Street Car Super Nationals is the one major event that still permits screw-blown doorslammers in a virtually unlimited format race to the quarter-mile, and given Stanley’s place as one of the quickest and fastest door slammers in the world to the eighth-mile, it stood to reason that, given the right racing surface in the right weather conditions, they could post some stunning numbers on the boards at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. And that they did.
In the opening round of qualifying on Thursday, Stanley showed the potential of the flamed Stanley & Weiss ’69 Camaro, posting a 5.79 at a coasting 204 MPH, then turned around on Friday morning and stunned the drag racing world with the quickest run ever, and the first 5.6-second pass in history, with their 5.64 at 253.04 MPH.
“If you can believe it, we didn’t even have a quarter-mile tuneup when we left. I have a lot of experience with Roots blowers but not a whole lot with a screw blower,” Camp told us after the run.
Proving the earlier run was no fluke (and letting the bracket racers on the property know he’s got their number, too), Stanley posted another 5.64 in the evening session to back it up. Stanley eventually made it all the way to the final round on Sunday evening with runs of 5.71 and 5.76 during eliminations, where he was defeated by the ultra-consistent turbocharged Corvette of Troy Coughlin.
While the potentially unsafe terminal speeds of today’s screw blower cars has long been cited as concern for allowing them to compete on the quarter-mile, Stanley’s finish line speed was well within the range of today’s legal Pro Modified cars, and as much as 10 MPH less than some turbocharged entries have recorded. Based on the numbers, Stanley’s Camaro was pouring coals like nobody’s business in the front half, going .956 to sixty feet, 2.501 to 330-feet, and 3.716 at 203.85 MPH to half track.
Our buddy Shannon Davis of Davis Technologies was on hand assisting the Stanley crew, making laps on a brand new system that he’s calling the “Profiler” that’s currently under development. According to Davis, it took he and Camp just two runs to figure out the new system and make the record-shattering runs, and given it’s performance right out of the box, we should be hearing a lot more about this new unit in the coming months.
Our congratulations go out to the entire Stanley & Weiss team, who have poured their hearts and souls into their racing operation for many years, on a job well done on a performance that will be remembered for a long, long time. The bar has been raised, ladies and gentleman.
Credit to Richie W. for the video footage