The Sweet 16 was an action-packed affair from start to finish with great racing, drama, and plenty of record passes to go around. One of the records that fell was the 275 radial tire mark of 3.99 at the hands of Florida racer Don Lamana. Over the course of the weekend, Lamana made several passes in the three-second zone in Pro 275 trim, and reset the 275 radial record to a 3.94-second elapsed time on his Mickey Thompson tires.

Lamana’s Pro Fab Performance-built Mustang has been a front-runner in the Pro 275 class and has knocked on the three-second door for some time. At the Sweet 16, Lamana was able to capitalize on the outstanding track surface and weather conditions to unleash the full potential of his car’s power.

“We were able to make our runs in a reasonable amount of time so the track and weather conditions really didn’t change a lot between each. That’s huge because we were able to make adjustments and know what their impact was, rather than trying to guess if a change in conditions made the adjustment better or worse,” Lamana explains.

The combination of Pro Line Racing big-block Chevy and Frankenstein Engine Dynamics cylinder heads powered Lamana’s Mustang at the Sweet 16. Precision Turbo provided Lamana with a pair of their 94mm Gen 2 turbos to add plenty of boost and power to the Pro Line engine. The engine is controlled and tuned via a Haltech engine management system. M&M Transmission supplied the two-speed TH400, while a Protorque EV1 torque converter transfers power to all the Santhuff shocks and RaceCraft suspension parts.

The record-breaking 3.94 pass at 196 mph didn’t just appear from thin air, according to Lamana — it was all the parts of his team coming together at one time finally to produce the complete package.

“To get where we are it took good people like my tuner Wade Hopkins from SSR, a good engine builder, a good transmission builder and the right suspension parts. We’ve always had good parts, but had to fight stupid issues to get ahead. This was the first opportunity where we could bring everything together at one time and the track was there to handle it. We were able to make big suspension changes at this race, and we’ve never been able to do that before because either the track or weather was just not consistent enough.”

Now that the team has unlocked a treasure chest of information and data on the Mustang, Lamana is ready to keep picking up more numbers on his timeslips.

“With the knowledge we gained at this event we will be going consistently faster. Obviously, we won’t be going a 3.94 every run, but the data has made our overall program better. Now we can slow the car down a tenth or two and still go right down in the heat or if the track is marginal. Before we had problems slowing the car down because we didn’t have the data, now we know how to manipulate our tune for conditions to make power management better.”

Lamana plans to continue running the Pro 275 class at Duck X Productions events in the future. Also on his racing calendar are some 28/275 shootouts that allow class cars, and some of the newly-added events at Orlando Speed World that include Pro 275.

Check out this video from Pro Line Racing that shows Lamana’s record-setting pass at the Sweet 16!