Outside of the normal stuff one would expect to see during NHRA pre-season testing at Wildhorse Pass Motorsports Park in Chandler, Arizona, there was a fun sub-story that played out on Saturday. The only Pro Modified car on the property belonged to Harry Hruska but it wasn’t Harry driving. The driving chores were being completed by 2017 NHRA Mello Yello Pro Stock champion Bo Butner. Bo and Harry’s relationship goes back many years and during the 2017 NHRA season, Butner was paying a lot of attention to the Pro Mod class and in casual conversation would often mention how much he liked the cars. As a former Competition Eliminator world champ and with his success in pro mod the guy has proven he can drive anything with doors, so why not step up to the baddest door slammers of them all, right?
While Butner claims to not have an immediate plan to field a pro mod, he did get this license for more than just the fun of making the runs. We’re guessing that at some point this year we’ll be hearing about a new car being put together for the 2019 campaign, but that’s just some speculation on our part. Speculation based on seeing this movie play out more than a couple of times of the years.
So how did it go? From our standpoint as an interested observer, it went well. This was a guy who was not familiar with these cars in a technical driving sense and he made his license upgrade runs smartly and cleanly. The staging process in a turbocharged pro mod is vastly different than a pro stocker and it did not seem to phase Butner in the least as far as we were concerned. We spoke to him after the 330′ run and he was smiling a mile wide. He then said, “It was just starting to get good when I had to shut it off!” The “starting to get good part” is the fact that the boost was just starting to come on. Believe it or not, the turbocharged pro mod has a 60′ time that is basically equivalent to a 500ci pro stock car but when the turbos spool and the boost starts ramrodding into the engine, the real beast awakens.
Regarding this nervousness or lack thereof making the runs, Bo said, “There weren’t nerves that first run – I just really did not want to mess up the. Those were the only nerves I had about it. I think I’m smart enough to know if it gets out of shape, lift. It just keeps getting better. Of course he’s got some power taken away from it. He’s adding more each time. That run there I think I went 3.911 to the eighth at 200. That’s about what speed we run in a pro stocker to the quarter. It’s amazing to even think about how hard these cars pull.”
The best number that Butner was able to wrest out of the car came on his final quarter mile pull where the machine went 5.81 to earn him his license. “The back half of the race track is insane,” he told us. “The car pulls so hard you almost get tunnel vision. The whole experience was really good. I have never been strapped so tightly into a car. You really feel like you are one with the machine and even at those speeds of 250mph you feel safe. It was a great day.”
And what about car owner Harry Hruska? What did he think? His experience was as positive as Bo’s, “I think Bo is doing really good. It’s a lot different type of a car than the Pro Stock,” Harry said. He continued, It’s got power a lot further down the track and you’re brain just has to get used to it, but he’s handling it really well. These things get pretty itchy, but I think Bo is doing awesome. He’s enjoying it and loving it, and we’re having a great time. Bo casually has been talking about running Pro Mod for a long time. You have to get in there and see if you can do it. Of course, he’s a very capable driver and I had no doubt that he could. I’ve worked with a lot of really professional racers over the years and it takes a little bit of time. Not everybody is comfortable in the car, but he’s loving it. Everyone is having a great time, and we’re going to see what’s next.”
