Image courtesy of Doug Walker

“I’ve been racing hot rods since the early 1960s,” Gary Wolkwitz says. He and his brothers were always drag racing. They had a C/Gas Willys in the height of the Gasser era, but got out of racing in the 70s to raise families. He always liked the Hemi cars so in the early 2000s when he saw David Barton racing in Super Stock at the Dutch Classic at Maple Grove Raceway, he wanted to get involved in that style of racing.

Back in the day, Gary’s brothers did the driving, but this time around he wanted to be at the wheel, and his first pass down the track was in a Hemi Dart in 2007. Can you imagine your first pass down a drag strip taking place in a Hemi Dart?! That’s what dreams are made of right there.

Image courtesy of Doug Walker.

His current ’68 Dart is a Ken Keir-built Hemi clone that started life as a humble six-cylinder car. The engine is a Ray Barton Racing Engines’ 438 cubic inch Hemi with a Joel’s on Joy 727 Torqueflite. As you know, under Super Stock rules, they’re very limited on what they can do to the engine. The engine must use a cast-iron block and heads, and the heads are allowed to be ported, but must still maintain stock volume. Stock-sized valves are required, as well. They can run any intake, but there’s only so much air you can run through the heads, and with mandated 770 cfm Holley carburetors with vacuum secondaries, the team is definitely doing more with less under SS/AH rules.

The minimum weight is 3,200 pounds, and the car must have a fiberglass (or carbon fiber) front end, just like the original Hemi Darts and Barracudas had when they left Hurst Performance in 1968. Even with those restrictions, Wolkwitz just set the SS/AH national record with an 8.22 at 160 mph.

The record-setting run took place at Orlando Speed World just over a week ago as part of an NHRA Southeast Division 2 race. NHRA would only allow record runs to be made the Friday of the event, and that’s when Wolkwitz set the 8.22 at 160 mph record, with a 1.124 60-ft time. It was actually cooler on Saturday, Wolkwitz tells us, and Ray Barton Racing Engine’s David Barton thinks the car would’ve run in the eight-teens that day, but the team packed up and took the car back to Ray Barton Racing until the Gatornationals in March.

The paint is by Chris DePascale, who is a past Division 1 Super Comp champion

The car usually stays at Barton’s to continuously develop the chassis and engine. Wolkwitz works with Jim Daniels and Brian and Tyler Hard to fund an engine program within Ray Barton Racing Engines designed to get the most power out of these engines, and it looks like that work is paying dividends. The cars make so much power that they usually spin the tires from the 1/8-mile to the ¼-mile, but at Orlando, David Barton was impressed with the track prep, which enabled Wolkwitz to break the record.

“They (Ray Barton Racing Engines) built that car with me from scratch,” Wolkwitz says. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be doing this,” he adds. David Barton is the crew chief on the car, and Wolkwitz relies on him heavily. Wolkwitzs’ stiffest competition is Charlie Westcott in the War Fish Barracuda, along with Bucky Ness in the King Kuda II.

Wolkwitz is 69-years young as of this writing, and hopes to make the NHRA Gatornationals next month and the Hemi Shootout in Louisiana, along with select races throughout the year. He made 10 races in 2014 and plans to match that number in 2015.