Matt Hagan Makes Quickest Unofficial Funny Car Pass In History – 3.954?! Time Slip Inside


Matt Hagan Makes Quickest Unofficial Funny Car Pass In History – 3.954?! Time Slip Inside

(Photos: Matt Hagan’s Twitter feed) – Sure it was only a test hit but what a test hit it was! The duo of driver Matt Hagan and crew chief Dickie Venables, along with their hard working crew turned out to be championship caliber in 2014 and by the looks of things in winter testing, the rest of the funny car world had better be worried for 2015 as well. For those of you who think that once the crews pack the trucks and roll out the gate at Pomona to close a season and their vacation begins, you thought wrong. The sport has become a year ’round situation with testing both between races and during the winter being a constant factor in the development, refinement, and incremental performance increases that these teams live and die on. This is the time of the year when new crew guys earn their chops, the time of the year when full on experimentation is part of the program, and honestly it is the time of the year that championship seasons are born.

When you consider the fact that some teams left the NHRA World Finals and went home to essentially rebuild from scratch and then consider that this finely tuned unit is churning out numbers the likes of which no one has ever seen before, you can start to understand how quickly and easily it is to fall behind in the upper echelons of the nitro ranks. Some of the most noted names in the history of the sport took brief breaks only to find that they had been passed by in a very short amount of time.

We have a feeling that Venables made an critical adjustment in the way that the newfangled Schumacher six disc clutch was working on its way down the track and that led to the numbers that you see below on the time slip and on the board. As awesome and astounding as it is to see pro mod style cars running deep into the three second zone on the track to the eighth mile, look at the number on this slip for Hagan. 3.20 seconds to the eighth mile cone at 277mph. That’s just awesome to consider. Also when you think about the fact that the car accelerated about another 50mph in the span of the last seven tenths of a second of the run from 277 to 323 it’ll also blow you mind.

Four hits yesterday, five today, those guys are working hard and getting their money’s worth at Palm Beach International Raceway!

HERE’S THE TIME SLIP FROM THE TESTING SHOT HEARD ‘ROUND THE NITRO WORLD –

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6 thoughts on “Matt Hagan Makes Quickest Unofficial Funny Car Pass In History – 3.954?! Time Slip Inside

  1. Gizmo

    Hey wasn’t there a guy named Lee Beard working for NHRA to slow these cars down, did they forget? Congrats Matt Hagen and Dickie V, awesome way to start 2015.

  2. Kevin

    Anyone have an idea what the 1/4 mile E.T. would be?
    I know that will never happen again with these speeds.
    Just curious at a guess!

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