As most people know the Red Victor team went back to Bahrain in January to continue the quest for 5’s with a street legal car, and then go for the ET and speed record in the ¼ mile for a street legal car held currently by Jeff Lutz. As before ace tuner and good friend Shane Tecklenburg was in the house, and determined to get RV3 hauling down the track and running how it should do. The consensus outside our camp was there was no way that a 2965lb car could ever achieve the numbers we were after, and we were after proving those naysayers wrong….

Of course, all of this isn’t easy. Shipping the car and truck 5000 miles, getting the crew there, sourcing stolen items, fixing broken trucks, fixing the car, shipping the upgraded engine/trans and spares is all consuming. But, we signed up for it, so it just has to get dealt with without fuss or drama so we can carry on with the task in hand.

Anyway, the team of Deb, Gary, Badger and myself, along with 5 second club members Nick Bradley and Nik Wadsworth (and Gurmeet Dhanjal later on) got there early to refit the engine and trans, check the car over and get it ready to make a test lap. 4 days later after a host of niggly problems that needed fixing got done. We found out that leaving a car standing for a year doesn’t do them any good, although at least it was standing out of the sun!

We got a few test laps under our belt (albeit with tyre shake/spin) and continued to get further down the track as we learnt things from the data. We eventually managed to run the full ¼ to get a baseline on the new Lamude Racing built engine. This told us the engine was in good shape, and more importantly that the tune up was incredibly safe! In fact so safe it wasn’t actually making any power of note. As we were having issues with the suspension/wheelie bar we decided not to bother with the 60ft, and concentrate on the 330ft onwards to try and reach that initial goal.

So Shane set about chipping fuel and adding timing in small increments till the plugs looked like they had actually fired, so we would gain some more power.

Our initial test lap was 6.36, then 6.18, 6.04, 6.03 then finally 6.022 @ 250.92 mph, which put us 1/2mph and .18 secs off the record, and tantalisingly close to our initial goal of 5.999. This paid dividends when we realised how much power this std bore space Chevy engine with the Precision 102mm pro mod turbos made! By weight and speed right around 3650hp and the 70% level we are at now. Not so bad…

Next run was going to be the one, but as always in this sport of ours something has to give. This time the pinion stripped it’s teeth at around 150ft. Unfortunately this was the last day of racing at BIC, and because with diff breakage comes trans breakage we just ran out of time trying to fix to get another run. Damn….

The teams initial reaction was so near and yet so far, and it was time to pack up and come home. But, our loyal supporters in the 5 second club, along with our main sponsor R-Tech Welding Equipment were having none of it. They had been watching team member Andy Betsons’s live video for 2 weeks and had followed the ups and downs minute by minute!

They wanted us to come back and get the job finished, so within a week raised enough for us to go back (without going broke).

So, the team are going back for one last go at Round 5 of the BDRC championship on 6^th March to 9^th of March. We will arrive there a week earlier to get the new diff (supplied and built by Hauser Racing) in the car, and make the changes we want to make, plus check the whole car over, inc replacing the prop, slip yoke, valve springs (9600rpm on the limiter when the diff broke ) so we can get a couple of test laps on the last day of round 4. We are confident we’ll be in the 5s very soon after that, then we will do what is necessary to shoot for the MPH and ET part of the record. Of course only the timing slip counts..

Of course, doing something like this cannot be done by the team alone. It takes the help of sponsors and supporters to do it, and we couldn’t ask for better in ours.

Thank you to all of these companies and people who have helped and supported our quest for the last 3 years and more.

Red Victor 5 second full members club

Lamude Racing Engines

R-Tech Welding Equipment

Tuned by ShaneT

Precision Turbo and Engine

Turbosmart UK

E Kanoo Racing and Logistics

UTrackTV

VP Fuels

Pro Alloy Motorsport

GoodridgeLtd

Cam Auto Developments

Steve Morris Engines

Plastics4Performance

Belistore

Turbowerx

KA Sensors

Total Seal Piston Rings

Diamond Pistons

Manton Pushrods

Red Line Oils

Zircotec

Neal Chance Converters

Hutch Transmissions

Victory Performance

Powerlite Performance Electronics

WallworkHT

Wilson Manifolds

Precision Shaft Technologies

Prestige Group

Visner Engine Development

Trackstuff UK

Cartek Motorsport Electronics

Pro Torque

MSK Racing

Braille Batteries

Magnecor

Club Calibra

 

And finally Adel Shaji, Hamad Shahabi and all the BRDC guys, and Bahrain International Circuit, who have accommodated our every need, and literally treated us like royalty every time we went to the track!

Hope you keep watching….