ProTorque Highlights Their Customers In Season Recap Banner

Year after year, manufacturers are looked upon to come up with new concepts and parts to transform the drag racing industry and look for the ever-elusive thousandths of a second to lower already record-crushing elapsed times. One product that was once often overlooked in some genres of drag racing was the torque converter. There’s a lot going on inside the converter that you’ll never see as you streak down the strip in the driver’s seat. That’s where the ingenuitive minds at companies like ProTorque come in.

After a rigorous 2015 season with thousands of passes, hundreds of small changes and a fresh face to the converter world, ProTorque took home numerous championships, event wins and career bests that’s been highlighted in their now annual season recap poster artwork seen all across their social media outlets.

Kevin Fiscus (PDRA Pro Boost) and Michael Biehle (NMCA Pro Mod) hoisted championship trophies in their respective categories, while Bill Lutz (IHRA Pro Mod) came up just one round short of giving Team ProTorque three Pro Modified championships. Roderjan Busato (Brazil) and Tero Laukkanen (Europe) both made international history by becoming the quickest and fastest Pro Mods in their given country. Meanwhile, Keith Berry took hold of NMCA Radial Wars once again in 2015 to go back-to-back as series champion for the prestigious National Muscle Car Association, the lone standing organization giving the radial racers a season-ending championship to chase at this time.

Not to be outdone, DeWayne Mills took home seven (yes, that says seven) event wins in Radial vs. The World/Radial Wars/Pro Drag Radial competition in 2015 and currently stands as the quickest big-block, twin-turbocharged combo in the class with a 3.97.

X275 was a dogfight all season long, and when John Kolivas/KBX Performance is involved, big things are expected. Jared Johnston wheeled the deal to eight number one qualifier awards, five event wins and ended 2015 holding the world record at an astounding 4.37-second elapsed time with a single turbocharged small-block Ford engine on 275 radials.

Joel Greathouse, Daniel Pharris, Josh Klugger, Jacky McCarty, and many others in drag radial also had impressive seasons and put up top elapsed times, all while flying the ProTorque colors.

While all these performances are equally impressive, the question also arose, just how much can these converters withstand? With that in mind, ProTorque highlighted Hot Rod Drag Week with a new event elapsed time and speed record by Jeff Lutz at 6.05 and 251 mph, along with class titles from Tom Bailey (Unlimited), Bryant Goldstone (Ultimate Iron), and Tom McGilton (Pro Street Power Adder). Larry Larson piloted the world’s quickest street legal vehicle to a win in NHRA Top Sportsman at Topeka and is, to date, the only street-driven car in the five-second range, with a best of 5.88-seconds, set this fall at the Street Car Super Nationals.

With so many accomplishments in Pro Modified, Drag Radial, and Drag Week, what else is missing? Only one of the hottest things going in drag racing:  Street Outlaws. Justin “Big Chief” Shearer and Shawn “Murder Nova” Ellington use ProTorque converters to stand atop the “Top 10” list in the 405.

After debuting the EV1 mid-season, Joe Rivera and the crew was very proud of it’s performances with testing in everything from street cars to Pro Mods. Rivera and ProTorque are a very dedicated bunch of individuals that love to highlight their racers and customers for their continued support and the eagerness to always push forward. “We put this product through the paces. Pro Mods, radial cars, street cars, you name it, we did it. Drag Week alone, we dominated and that is the TRUE test of product durability; 5 tracks, 1,200 miles towing a trailer, and blasting off six-second passes at each track,” Rivera says in closing.