Update: Berry and company turned their Corvette around later in the afternoon and cranked off a staggering 3.973 at 189.99 — the quickest pass ever on radials, although not an official record. Berry planned his final pass of the test to be a full 1/4-mile hit, but spun the tires early and called off the run.
Spurred perhaps by Brad Edwards’ barrier-breaking 3.990-second pass just over a week ago at Radial Fest 2K14 in Alabama, perennial Drag Radial frontrunner and recent world record holder Keith Berry headed south this week — along with a host of other other ProLine Race Engines-powered machines — to the Bradenton Motorsports Park to take a crack at the magical three-second zone before putting a lid on the 2014 racing season.
Berry, with an official competition pass of 4.04 already to his credit in his twin-turbocharged, 468 cubic inch LSX-powered Chevrolet Corvette, ripped off a career best lap of 4.015 at 190.67 miles per hour on Tuesday, with tuner-to-the-stars Steve Petty on hand to help turn the screws and light the wick.
Hellbent on getting that three-second timeslip, Berry rolled his jet black Corvette out of the trailer on Wednesday and wasted little time in doing the deed, as he rolled out to just the second sub-four second pass ever on radials, lighting the scoreboard up with a 3.995 at 187.50 miles per hour, going 1.048 to sixty-feet and 2.686 to the 33-foot clocks.
For Berry, the 3.99 just puts the icing on the cake on what was a stellar campaign by any measurement, as he captured the inaugural NMCA Radial Wars championship and traded blows back and forth in the record department all season long with his big-block-powered peers in what has been one of, if not the most, epic season of small-tire racing ever.