There are moments that stay with you – moments that define who you are and the world. Then there are those that you get to experience as an observer and they, in many ways, no less important because they change the world, too. Now, when it comes to the automotive industry we can divide these milestones into a variety of categories – from the technical – such as the invention of the internal combustion engine made its way from a clumsy, irregular technology (which was invented in 1859, by French engineer J. J. Étienne Lenoir, by the way) to the modern engines we have today.
Then, you have the application-related categories, like setting the fastest land speed record – done by Andy Green on October 15th, 1997, in the Black Rock Desert, going at 1227.985 kilometres per hour.
We’re proud to send our admiration out to Jeff Lutz, who broke the Dodge Viper Quarter Mile Record – no small feat, really, and since the Viper was introduced in 1992 the competition for glory of controlling the capable beast has been heated.
The latest 2016 ACR model has earned itself a position across the world for its quality even before it had rolled off the production line. Really, it’s a drag racing favourite.
Flashback to January 26th, 2016 – it’s a rather innocuous Tuesday for some, and while the world seemed to be carrying on as it should, HOT ROD Drag Week champion Jeff Lutz was preparing for his turn behind the steering wheel.
Taking Shawn Beard’s 1997 Viper V10 coupe to the racetrack, Lutz fired up the engine and blazed forward, covering the quarter mile in 6.78 seconds and at 211 mph no less.
How much faster was he than the previous record holder, Sal Patel?
0.2 seconds.
That’s right.
Sal Patel covered the quarter mile in 6.98 seconds.
Remembering the day, Lutz said, “We hustled out of town to beat the storm [the northeast was blanketed with three-feet of snow last week] and were in Orlando Sunday night. The first day I was trying to figure out the boost on the starting line. We made a few 60-foot runs, some 330-foot runs, and finally on Tuesday we did some half-track passes, but the front end kept coming up and I couldn’t steer. We knew it was going to rain on Wednesday so we had to get it done Tuesday night. I lowered the wheelie bars, cooled it down and we went back up.”
A fine day it was, too, considering the record, and he finished it with a smile on his face, going on to say: “It was amazing, everybody was freaking out, even the guys from the track because they knew why we were there,” Lutz told us. “That’s what he [Shawn] built the car for and to get it the record the first time out—on our first full pass—was just amazing. Our intention was to set two records [Lutz also tried to set the World’s Quickest Street Car record with his 1969 Camaro but fell a bit short] so one out of two isn’t bad.”
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