Over the winter, we ran into our friends Bob and Tony Niemczyk, who were plenty pumped for the new year after closing out the 2012 campaign on a high note with their awesome turbocharged 2.0L Mitsubishi-powered I/Dragster, which you’ve no doubt read about here on the pages of Dragzine in the past. Bob, the family patriarch, took back the reigns of the family’s ultra-trick Competition Eliminator dragster for a weekend and drove it to a new best of 6.573 seconds at 204.17 mph at Maple Grove Raceway’s Pennsylvania Dutch Classic that reset both ends of the I/Dragster record, thanks to an earlier 6.60 lap as a backup.
The last time we wrote about the Niemczyk’s, they’d just carded their previous best number of 6.66 at a Lucas Oil Series event at Raceway Park in Englishtown, and between there and the NHRA national event at Maple Grove, bolted on a set of Weld Racing V-Series double-beadlock wheels, thus shaving about ten pounds of rotating weight out of the car. There, Tony proceeded to click off runs of 6.83 and 6.63 in qualifying (making them the quickest and fastest Mitsubishi 4G63 in the world) that garnered them their first-ever No. 1 qualifying position at a national event over 35 other top-notch racers.
A week later at the Dutch, Bob and Tony worked with the folks at Coan Racing to make some changes with their bolt-together torque converter in an effort to gain a little more performance. It was decided ahead of time that, given this was not a points race, Bob would take back the reigns for a weekend to try for his first 200 mph pass, and what he ended up with was his name in the record books rather than his son.
Bob got his 200 mph wings on his first pass, going 6.60 at 203.25 mph. On the next lap, Tony pushed the setup a little too hard and slowed the car in the elapsed time department, but did propel it to an even faster 204.57 mph. Said Tony: “that BorgWarner turbo was loving the cool air October air in Pennsylvania.”
On the very next pass, Bob drove the dragster to the 6.57-second lap, setting both ends of the 1/4 mile record and qualifying fourth in what was one of the quickest fields in Competition Eliminator all season long.
Tony was quick to thank all of the people and manufacturers that helped make the record-breaking year possible, including his father, crewmen Roger Niemczyk and Chris Regan, Extreme PSI, Manley Performance, AEM Electronics, BorgWarner, Fuel Injector Clinic, SparkTech Ignitions, Erbified Motorsports, Kiggly Racing, Turbo4.com Race Engines, and Scott’s Engine Specialities.
You might also like
Good Time Charlie: How Parker Cannon’s 1965 GTO Became Powerhouse Street Car
Charlie Parker's 1965 GTO is a real street beast. This build is the result of Parker's obsession with cars and creating memories.
