Most of us you have seen the video by now, and those who haven’t have heard about Eric Dillard wheeling Willard Kinzer’s ProLine-powered Mustang to a scintillating 4.07 at 199 MPH during testing on Tuesday. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at a few key points from the video, provided by ProLine’s PR point man and social media marketing wizard Bud Hodge. Luckily for us, Bud uses a good camera that captures quality video and audio, so we can really dissect the footage and understand what’s so awesome about this pass.
The reason ProLine was so keen on testing Kinzer’s setup — they stayed at Holly Springs an extra day to get more track time — was to get some data on their new 481X Stage 3 heads under “unlimited boost” conditions. Until this session, nobody had unleashed the full fury of the twin 98mm Precision Pro Mod turbos on a set of Stage 3’s. As you can see, the results are pretty spectacular.

Just off the line, you can see the wheelie bars still haven’t made contact with the track surface. They wouldn’t until nearly half track!
Diving into the footage, we will show you why we believe there is still quite a bit of ET left in this combo. Fast forwarding to the pass itself, it’s obvious the team setup the car to launch fairly soft. Traction has never been an issue at Holly Springs, so it stands to reason the launch is so cushy to either ease stress on the driveline so as not to knock themselves out of this weekends race, or perhaps they just don’t want to show their hand. It seems more likely that they just didn’t want to break an axle or rear end, both of which Holly Springs’ starting line has claimed by the dozen.
What’s most telling about the soft launch is that while it looks and sounds effortless, the 1.09 60′ time is hardly slow for a Radial vs the World car. In fact, DeWayne Mills, the current Radial Tire record holder at 4.06 “only” ran 1.10 to the 60 foot timers on his record pass.
As the car passes the 60′ timer, you hear the engine hit it’s stride, almost to the point of sounding like a nitrous car activating a monster fogger 1.3 seconds or so into the run. You can see the rear end plant as the wheelie bars lightly touch and the car screams toward the finish line.
Dillard tosses the laundry early enough to bring the car to an uneventful stop. We then rewind and ride along with Eric from the in-car perspective — the footage cuts to Dillard and track manager Terry “Jabbo” Forsyth calculating the back split — the ET from the 330′ mark to the finish line — a wicked 1.247 on this pass, and it’s here that we are greeted by perhaps the most important bit of info contained in the whole video.
PLR’s tuning wizard Steve Petty makes a brief appearance, and can be heard to exclaim, quite confidently, “I told you… Let me get ahold of a radial car!” Petty has tuned his share of radial cars, but his statement would imply that in this case, he’s letting nothing, and we mean nothing, remain on the table, mechanically or otherwise. Remember, just a few short weeks ago, the same Steve Petty tuned the Q80 Pro Mod Camaro driven by Turky al Zafiri to mind-numbing, record-shattering numbers at the SCSN Anarchy at the Arch event in St. Louis.
With Petty on tuning duties, we may very well be looking at the future radial king, folks. Of course, he has to get by Mills, who will certainly defend his crown with all he’s got!