At the end of last year, I made a decision: Project Angry Grandpa, our in-house 2006 Chrysler 300C, was going to take an off year after three solid years of use and abuse. With over 50,000 miles’ worth of BangShift project car time under it’s belt, the 300C has seen land-speed racing, road course time, autocrossing, plenty of drag racing, long-distance road trips and thanks to one particular show I shot in Tennessee last year, it’s even seen mud. And while overall the car has held up remarkably well, those miles still add up to issues. It’s almost time for new rotors all the way around, as well as the annual tie-rod replacements. I’d like to flush out the old brake fluid, and I’d really like to take a day or two and give the poor car the thorough cleaning and detailing it deserves. But that was before I got wind of the Hemi Shootout…or, rather, that it was going to be free and at Beech Bend. I had my spot reserved before my brain could make the connection. So what, it’s one race…it’ll be fine!

It would also be a return to the track proper since ATCO in November 2016, when it ran the personal best of [email protected] MPH. It’s been to the strip since, but the one lap I made at Milan last year and the test and tune I ran at Beech Bend this spring have indicated that 13.16 is a miracle time that can solely be attributed to ATCO’s legendary late fall air densities. The forecast for the 2018 NMCA Bluegrass Nationals might as well have been “mostly cloudy with a 100% chance of swamp-ass”. Early summer in Kentucky is filled with pop-up thunderstorms and lately, summer-like temperatures and humidity levels. I guessed that the car would run mid-13s and around 100 MPH and got to work preparing. The backseat and passenger seat came out, as did the spare tire and equipment, and the Nitto NT50 radials got bolted on. I switched the tune from street to strip and went to bed on Thursday night, looking forward to my first time trial on Friday.

From the moment I opened my eyes on Friday morning, I knew that this was going to be a fight. Let’s start with the 10:45 am wake-up, courtesy of an alarm clock that failed to act. Sleeping in an extra three hours further than I planned cost me a morning time trial and I wasn’t going to get one until later that afternoon, so I tech’d the car in, sticker-bombed it according to the class requirements, and got to work shooting the action on the strip. As the sun started to set I shifted back to the Chrysler and once called, got into the lanes and paired off with another 300C that would make for good competition. I’ll admit that my reaction time was garbage, but that still didn’t explain the outright ass-kicking I took: [email protected] MPH, with a 2.2 60′. From beginning to end, there was something really off about the run. AG wouldn’t do a burnout to save it’s life, the launch almost felt like a second-gear take-off and the car was in no hurry to roll out. The DA was 2,356 feet, but that didn’t explain half of the issue. I shot a note to Erik at BFNY Performance to see if he had any ideas, and he suspected that the traction control did not shut off like it was supposed to…it would explain the burnout and if right, would’ve pulled timing at the drop of the hammer. Agreeing that might have had something to do with it, I found a nice, quiet backroad and did some experimenting.

Two sets of scratches later on a wet roadway, and I was satisfied, and on the last time trial held on Saturday morning before the competition, the proof was on the slip: [email protected] MPH. And with that, I waited until the Hemi Shootout kicked off in force.

The deal with the Shootout was simple: it was a three-run average bracket race broken up into categories ranging from nine seconds to fifteen seconds. Two runs were very close to each other…within minutes, actually. Run one netted a [email protected], and almost went bad when the Chrysler tried to push through the beams while brake-torquing. The second lap, the hot lap, turned a [email protected], and after parking the car down at the shutdown area of the track, it was immediately obvious that the 5.7L was quite toasty. The hood went up in a nearly futile effort to bleed off some of the heat, but I didn’t have nearly as much to worry about as other racers. A six-speed Hellcat had the rich, hearty aroma of burnt clutch about it. Jay “Speedy” Orrand, the man behind ChallengerFest, immediately went to work swapping on his skinny front runners. YouTuber SRTMush was pulling double-duty…in addition to being involved in the Shootout, he was filming an episode of Grudge Race with his wife and their two cars, a wicked Hellcat Charger and his monster Demon.

Two runs down, and I wasn’t changing a thing on the car. I wasn’t going to be any faster, but I wanted to see if the cool down would have any effect. It did…the final run netted a [email protected] MPH. And that was with a DA of 2,978 ft. The average run calculated out to [email protected] MPH…not outstanding, certainly not close enough to thirteen seconds to put me in the winner’s circle, but all things considered respectable for a tank that’s north of two tons and is over 150,000 miles on. And with that, AG’s racing for the year is back on hiatus, and it’s looking more and more likely that this is where the car will stay for some time to come…it’s an entertaining daily driver but a true race car, it isn’t.