After providing a sneak peak to the public at the NHRA U.S. Nationals last September, the folks at Mopar officially unveiled the new Dodge Challenger Drag Pak on June 26th, doing so with a media event held at Chrysler’s Chelsea Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan.

At said media event, one of the Chrysler test drivers got behind the wheel of one of the new Drag Paks with a naturally aspirated 426-cubic-inch Gen III HEMI engine under the hood to give the media a little taste of what the new machine could do. Unfortunately (for him) it almost proved to be a bit too much.

The folks at Motor Authority were on hand with their video cameras rolling as the test driver rolled the Challenger into the water box, where the car — which sounds mighty healthy, we should add — stalled and took several moments to fire back up. Once it did re-light, the pedal was put to the big HEMI for a long, smoky burnout. In the process, though, the car got almost completely sideways and nearly took out a tent situated along the roadway.

How the driver actually recovered from such a sideways drift is beyond us, but it did prove that not only is the Drag Pak quick, but it can also handle quite well when called upon. But let’s just hope, for the sake of anyone standing near the waterbox at a drag strip in the future, that such abilities are never needed again.