The quickest nitrous run of qualifying (a 6.168) was not the talk of the weekend. The talk was largely centered around a testing lap two days before the event.

Once again, Shannon Jenkins and the Awesome Motorsports team have given hope to nitrous fans everywhere. After countless hours of off season research and development and testing throughout the beginning of the season, Jenkins uncorked the first 6.0-second nitrous pass in history while testing at the newly resurfaced Darlington Dragway on Wednesday.

“The Iceman” piloted teammate Mike Castellana’s brand new Jerry Haas-built ’07 Western Beef Mustang to a 6.080, 231 MPH blast in the heat of the day.

 

The quickest nitrous run of qualifying (a 6.168) was not the talk of the weekend. The talk was largely centered around a testing lap two days before the event.

 

Once again, Shannon Jenkins and the Awesome Motorsports team have given hope to nitrous fans everywhere. After countless hours of off season research and development and testing throughout the beginning of the season, Jenkins uncorked the first 6.0-second nitrous pass in history while testing at the newly resurfaced Darlington Dragway on Wednesday.

“The Iceman” piloted teammate Mike Castellana’s brand new Jerry Haas-built ’07 Western Beef Mustang to a 6.080, 231 MPH blast in the heat of the day.

“Everything went super. It felt real good,” allowed Jenkins, always a man of few words. What makes the achievement even more impressive is the fact that Awesome Motorsports is campaigning two brand new racecars, powered by brand new Reher-Morrison engines. Jenkins and crew have gone from struggling with the new equipment bugs to recording the quickest nitrous pass in history in just a matter of weeks.

A contributing factor in the turnaround was the assistance of veteran tuner/driver and Roy Hill’s Drag Racing School instructor Mike Bell. The current ADRL Pro Extreme points leader lent his chassis tuning expertise to the team, and the results speak for themselves.

One man that was happy to receive the news via a phone call from Jenkins was chassis builder Jerry Haas. “I’m elated. When I got the call and he told us what he ran, everybody in the shop was doing cartwheels,” said Haas. “For him to take one of our cars and do that just makes us really happy.”

Another person happy to see the team’s progress is David Reher of Reher-Morrison. “David is on top of this engine program,” Jenkins said. “He’s just as interested in seeing these things run fast as Jerry and I are.”

Of course, running that elapsed time during testing and running it during a national event are two different stories. However, the track and weather conditions should be favorable for a repeat performance.

“Oh yeah, we definitely want to run that well here. I think we can do it again,” added Jenkins.

“Everything is working out great,” Shannon said. “This is why we made all the moves we did. We knew they would be positive, and it’s turning out that way.”

After Friday night’s first qualifying session, Castellana’s Raging Bull Mustang sits in the number two spot, posting a 6.185, 227.57 MPH lap to pace all nitrous entries. Jenkins’ GTO ran into tire shake early and coasted to a 12.115 elapsed time.