If anyone in the Pro Modified world from either side of the guardrail didn’t know who Jose Gonzalez was last week, it’s fair to say they do now.
The relative newcomer to the fast doorslammer ranks from the Dominican Republic waged an assault on the all-time doorslammer elapsed time mark at the Street Car Super Nationals in Las Vegas over the weekend, and in the process out together one of the most stunning single-race performances in drag racing history.
Gonzalez, who teamed with Eric Dillard, Doug Patton, Steve Petty, and the crew at Proline Racing last season and debuted a brand new 1968 Camaro twin-turbo Proline power at mid-season this year, broke the four-year old record of 5.738 set by Scott Cannon at the Shakedown at E’Town in 2008 by running 5.730, placing himself and the El General Racing team in the history books.
“Honestly, we never expected it; it came out of the blue,” Gonzalez said in a post-qualifying interview with the PSCA. “I mean, I gotta give thanks to my guys. My job was basically pretty easy. Pro Line has that car running like a bracket car. “We had some bad tire shake at 50 to 80 feet, so it slowed it down a little bit at the 60,” he said. “We were able to pick it up a little bit in the mile per hour down low to the eighth mile. But we were a little loose so we couldn’t make that run like we wanted to.”
Gonzalez opened the weekend with a stellar 5.80 to claim the special bonus Pro Street Quickest Pass Challenge on Thursday evening, but it was NHRA Pro Modified regular Don Walsh Jr. that fired the first shot in qualifying and had the drag racing world abuzz, grabbing the provisional pole on Friday with a killer 5.74 to the 5.77 posted by Gonzalez.
By Saturday, however, the Super Nationals had become the personal clinic of Gonzalez.
In the third round of qualifying, the El General Camaro ripped of a 5.732 at 259.16 mph and followed it with the 5.730-second run at 258.02 mph. Gonzalez was sub-1.00 to sixty-foot and ran 3.83 and 3.84 to half track on the pair of runs. Sunday’s eliminations proved to be much of the same, as Gonzalez, with Petty turning the knobs, clicked off successive runs of 5.750, 5.757, 5.751, and 5.737 leading up to the final round. Unfortunately, El General’s march to a second-straight Pro Street victory at The Strip was cut short, after parts breakage in the semifinal defeat of Rob Cacioppo sidelined the blue and orange Camaro, allowing recently crowned NHRA Get Screened America Pro Mod champion Troy Coughlin a solo run to victory.
(Video credit Area 907 Sports Video)