While the IHRA may not have a professional series in 2017 they sure did in 2016 and in the nitro funny car category Jason Rupert hammered all comers and took home the title. In this Les Mayhew video from US131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Michigan we see the team lay down the two quickest runs in the history of the IHRA funny car class. The runs came in an interesting fashion because the first run you will see is a booming 5.55 which was a record number in and unto itself but the second run, a 5.52 was real home run. The 5.55 backed up the later 5.52 for the record and all was right with the world in Michigan.
What we noticed about both of these runs is just how smooth the car is. The flame pattern is brilliant and clean, there’s not a lot of wandering left to right in the lane, and ever the experienced driver Jason Rupert does a nice job of muscling the car through the lights.
The discontinuation of the pro series for IHRA in 2017 means that Rupert will once again be swinging his full attention to the big funny car races out west and (we think) some of the NHRA Heritage Series races. The March Meet is coming up and this team will be there with bells on to fight off all comers.
If they can do what they did here, the rest of the cars in the pits will really need to stand on it in order to compete!
That’s great! It looks like an actual car, not the generic blobs with decals that the NHRA allows.