While the drag racing world has been fixated on the march to the five-second zone amongst the world’s quickest and fastest import vehicles — and Gary White’s shattering of said barrier just a week ago — a driver who hails from just north of the American border has been quietly making some history, while positioning himself among the world’s elite racers. And doing so with a domestic powerplant with two fewer cylinders than his peers.

Carl Brunet, who owns and operates the Napierville Dragway, located just outside Montreal and a mere 15 miles from New York state, has been campaigning what is without question the baddest inline four-cylinder car in the world for a numbers of years, and continually set and rest the bar for such machines.

Brunet has, in recent seasons, campaigned a pair of Pontiac GXP’s, the first of which was heavily damaged in a crash at the Maryland International Raceway back in 2012. Brunet dusted himself off from that setback and purchased a Jerry Haas Race Cars-built GXP formerly campaigned by Mike Edwards in NHRA Pro Stock, and put his world-beating turbocharged GM Ecotec powerplant between the pipes.

Since that time, Brunet has, with little fanfare, chipped his way through the 6.50s, the 6.40s, and even the 6.30s, and recently rest his own world record while competing at the NHRA Southeast division Lucas Oil Series meet at the Orlando Speedworld Dragway when he ran a staggering 6.296-seconds at 222 mph during the second round of Top Sportsman eliminations. Brunet was No. 1 qualifier at 6.37.

As impressive as the run was itself is the fact that it placed Brunet at No. 10 on the list of the world’s quickest import and sport compact vehicles. The only other power plants in the top ten are the inline six-cylinder Toyota 2JZ (seven of them) and the three-rotor Mazda 20B (of which there are two). There is in fact no other four-cylinder car even even in the ballpark of the top runners in the world.

And, although it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, this GM-styled body with an actual GM high performance production engine under the hood has been more than a tenth of a second quicker than any 500-inch GM Pro Stock car has ever been. Just food for thought.