Santa Pod Test Day
Taking place at Santa Pod Raceway on the 13th of August, the Barton Racing Family and our friends, Dodge-Ram UK, united for another day of testing and developing the Challenger.
I had the task of getting the car down from its previous best time of 12.190 seconds, armed with its new plate of NO15EBR and lightweight drag racing wheels at the rear wrapped in a much stickier tyre, we were cruising for improvement. Sadly, the weather had other ideas and it rained several times delaying a lot of the runs and limiting our testing time, however this didn’t stop me from setting a blistering 11.596 seconds at 120mph with a reaction time of 0.359 seconds on the first run.
We were all extremely pleased with the result cutting my old time down by 0.594 seconds, this allowed us to start adjusting the tyre pressures to get even better grip off the line. After a pit stop with our glamorous assistant Steve Gaunt from Dodge-Ram UK and his Ram TRX, the Challenger and I were ready to go out again and try and cut the time down.
After several runs down the strip and a few more adjustments I feel that we got the grip in a really good and consistent place thanks to the new tyre pressures but we sadly couldn’t beat our first time of the day with my closest coming to 11.635 seconds, this means that it’s time for the Challenger to go on a much needed diet and maybe an updated livery I’m told that racing stripes can add 100 horsepower.