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How A Diesel And An Import Stole The Show In X275 At The Sweet 16
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Andrew Wolf March 28, 2019The inaugural World Series of X275, part of DuckX Productions’ Sweet 16 2.0 at the South Georgia Motorsports Park, featured inarguably the strongest field of 275 drag radial machines in the sport’s history, as more than 80 entries battled it out for a record $50,000 payday.
Not only was it the quickest field — the national record was reset at 4.235 and it took an incredible 4.340 to crack into the raceday program — but it was perhaps also its most diverse. And while a rather traditional supercharged small-block earned the races’ top prize, it was a pair of one-of-a-kind machines with two fewer cylinder than every other car on the property that stopped fans and fellow competitors in their tracks.
Florida diesel speed-shop proprietor Ryan Milliken, driving his coal-rolling 1966 Chevrolet Nova, stunned everyone in attendance and those at home as he qualified sixth in the record field with 4.289-second, 170.88 mph hit in his Cummins diesel-powered machine that will go down as one of the most memorable feats in a weekend littered with them. Just two positions back in eighth was another one-off combination in the category — Titan Motorsports’ 1994 Toyota Supra, powered by a turbocharged, inline-six 2JZ, with veteran Gary White at the controls.
For Milliken, his incredible performance was the culmination of years of headaches and tireless effort — all of which began to bear fruit at Lights Out 10 in February when he and his Hardway Performance team finally got a handle on their combination.
[QUOTE]The last three years have been figuring out how we get this car to go down this track. Everything that everyone else does doesn’t necessarily work for us, because our power delivery, power curve, torque output versus horsepower, is completely backasswards. – Ryan Milliken
“At Lights Out we went 4.45 in qualifying and then backed it up with another 4.45 in eliminations. We hauled the car home and put it in a display booth at an event — we decided not to race it since Sweet 16 was the following weekend. I changed the oil, put fresh tires on it, gave it a bath and in the first round of qualifying at Sweet 16 it went 4.45 again … so it was like a bracket car,” Milliken notes.
“I really didn’t know it was going to go that quick … it surprised the shit out of me. I always knew we had the power on tap to get there, but we had to figure out the entire combination to do it. The last three years have been figuring out how we get this car to go down this track. Everything that everyone else does doesn’t necessarily work for us, because our power delivery, power curve, torque output versus horsepower, is completely backasswards,” he explains. “Nothing works the same. Once we finally got the chassis figured out and showed the videos and data-logs to the guys at Menscer Motorsports, the only thing it was all telling us was that it wants more power. I thought, ‘I’ve been waiting three years for someone to tell me that.’
“So we moved the lock-up earlier into the run and put a little bit of power to it, expecting a big change, and it went 4.42,” Ryan continues. “That was a personal best, but I was expecting it to go a high-4.30. So I thought, ‘I guess I need to get more aggressive.’ This car has a really fine line between it being a dog and going 1.25 60-foot or 1.11 on the back tires trying to flip over backwards. So I really have to creep up on the spot where the car is really trying to go somewhere — we’re talking just moving the launch RPM by 10. I put a little power to it and in one pass we went from 4.42 to 4.32. That surprised the hell out of me. Then we looked at the data-log and determined it just wanted more power, and we went out and clicked off the 4.28.”
Milliken and crew chief Daniel Pierce backed the combination down for the warmer, sunny conditions of raceday in an attempt to go a 4.32-.33, but missed the setup and struck the tires early in their opening round matchup. But they’d already made their statement.