a name that may be familiar to you if you follow the worlds of land speed racing or NHRA drag racing. He runs a killer ’68 Hemi Dart SS/AH car in drag racing competition and has hauled the mail across the salt and into the record books many times in several different cars. He recently set another personal best, this time in a Ford. He drove a Mustang Cobra Jet at the Mojave Mile LSR event and set the new high water mark for speed in a Cobra Jet.
We got a press release from Kaufmann about the accomplishment. Raines is truly a speed freak!
Here’s the release:
John Rains has a grand legacy in auto racing. He owns as many Land Speed Records as anyone, including the worlds fastest production car. He also is a serious NHRA drag racer. While John has several very nice Fords including a Ford GT, a Cobra & even a restored Classic Bronco, but he has never raced Fords in competition. His new FR500 Cobra Jet Mustang designed for NHRA Stock class drag racing seemed like the perfect starting place to change that weakness in his impressive resume. John’s company HeliPower builds jet helicopter engines, so he knows a lot about engineering and doing things right. Racing and Helicopters have one thing in common: mistakes are not acceptable.
John contracted his old friend Chris Kaufmann and Kaufmann Racing’s Crew Chief Aaron Hoekstra to help set up the car to run the new Mojave Mile event. The Ford Racing Mustang was torn down and upgraded to 200 mph standards at Gary Hansen’s Race Car Fabrication shop in Pomona. Gary improved the roll cage and installed a SPARCO full racing seat as well as a full length window net. Few people have driven production race cars over 250 mph let alone over 300. This experience leaves a solid respect for speed which is why John depends on Gary Hansen to take care of his race cars including more upgrades to his record setting Bonneville Firebird.
Chris Kaufmann has relied on Aaron Hoekstra (Hoek’d Up Performance) for years now in his race and high performance street car projects including SEMA vehicles and his own Championship Mustang Challenge race efforts. As Kaufmann advised, “Aaron is a throw back of the old days where elbow grease was the key ingredient to racing success, while being totally in tune with all the modern electronics, data equipment and tools available to today’s performance shops. When you are driving flat out at the speeds we run you can’t trust just anyone to assemble all the critical nuts and bolts. Aaron gets it.”
The Mojave Mile is a standing 1 mile Run that takes place at the Mojave Airport on one of the two mile long runways. Race day was a very cool, windy day with some light rains causing minimal delays. Cross winds and cold track made handling an issue for all. The Rains Cobra Jet immediately established itself as one of the fastest cars and the only car that ran over 180 mph with no spoiler or splitter. Very impressive first outing and the team was told it was the world’s fastest FR500 Cobra Jet Mustang with John’s 182.9 mph clocking. The team used a new APR Performance Hood from their good friends at Scott Drake Muscle Cars.
They added a set of new Brisk spark plugs with the trick Sniper coils and some Red Line Lubricants. The team tested the CJ at Willow Springs before the event thanks to the bulletproof Currie 9″ road race rear end and the Eibach Performance Coil Springs. After all, Ford created this car for drag racing only and is based off of a v-6 chassis and brakes with a Ford GT Supercharged 5.4 engine. Kaufmann Racing called on Bruce Griggs for some components & advise. After the event the team agreed they can make it a lot faster, but it was a great first effort all put together in less than two weeks.
You can be sure that a true racer like John Rains will be back setting records again soon. Perhaps this next week in the Hemi Shootout at the “Mopars on the Strip” event at Las Vegas. Hoek’d Up Performance/Kaufmann Racing Annual Charity Car Show is scheduled for Sunday May 2, 2010. Profits from the event are being donated to the Austin Hatcher Foundation. Drop by and meet some Pro Racers, win some door prizes, see some all out race cars and show off your ride. Great food and even some tech seminars. For more information go to http://www.hoekdupperformance.com/
