The other day I’m down having a meeting with the gang at Racepak and MSD Performance, and ended up walking into a test area I probably wasn’t supposed to be in, with stuff that doesn’t quite exist yet, and couldn’t stop myself from snapping some cell phone pictures. Forgiveness is ofter easier to acquire than permission, so I was willing to see what would happen. Here’s how it all went down, so keep reading. Plus there are some things here you won’t be expecting.

It happened to be Racepak’s “Thanksgiving” Employee Luncheon day, and they were eating TACOS! I love tacos, so I hung around long enough to get invited to stay for lunch. Turns out, it was a really good thing that I did because while they were cleaning up, I was snooping… errrr…. looking around. And check out what I found!!!

According to the case, and some notes sitting with it, this is the newest generation of V500. Whether it will get a new number, we don’t know, but it is clearly Racepaks latest drag race datalogger.  It’s the same size as the current V500, and seems to be the same weight or close to it, by feel. The ends of the box are the biggest difference though. Looking at it, we realized it has a USB connection which is super awesome since that means no more serial cable adapters are needed. According to the testing notes we saw, it has a dedicated Smart Wire port, SD Card, and more inputs than normal as well. That means this next generation V500 will be able to do it all.

There is one more thing that we think is in this bad boy, but could get no direct confirmation on. We also got no direct denial. This feature makes us nervous to even print because, a certain drag race sanctioning body that we shall not name so they are less likely to see this blog item, may not like this feature. I can’t even get myself to write it, so I’ll give you a hint. Apparently the guy testing this prototype box wasn’t feeling good that day at work, in fact he said he was feeling blue. And something about going to the dentist. Must have been his teeth bothering him. We’re not sure. If the testing dude really does have this ailment, that means that he may not have to use a cable at all to read his data or change configurations in his V500 box. Cool don’t you think?

Check it out. I think they were testing so they can shine it up and talk about it at PRI this week. If you are going you will have to check it out. Brian will be there, and see if he can get any more info out of the Racepak guys.