Viper Performance Specialist Brings 2,000-HP Monsters to the Dragstrip
Quartet of Vipers head to FL2K20 to stake their claim to the $100K in prize money being offered to the fastest cars in the Southeast.
As an American icon of performance, we love, respect, and even fear the Viper. We also miss it. Even in stock form the Viper was a prodigious performance machine. It can tear up a road course and a drag strip. Today we take a closer look at the drag strip potential of these machines. Impressive when stock but otherworldly when modified. The folks at Calvo Motorsports know all about the potential of a modified Viper. They recently brought four of their heavy hitters to FL2K held at Florida’s Bradenton Motorsports Park. With over $100,000 in prize money, there was more than bragging rights on the line.
The good folks over at the 1320video YouTube channel covered the event and specifically the Calvo cars. Thanks to this coverage we get a close look at how the Calvo gang performed. They were not messing about either. They had a purple and an orange Viper on hand that were each making about 1,800 horsepower. A white Viper was putting out around 2,400 HP. The matte black Viper was the nastiest of all putting out an eye popping 2,700 HP at the wheels. For a little perspective, the Apache attack helicopter uses two General Electric gas turbine engines. Each of them produces about 1,900HP. So, the two “low power” Vipers basically match the output of the Apache.
Astounding.
Aside from the other competitors, Calvo had to battle the heat. Before the event they were hoping to get the lower power cars into the mid 180 to 190 mph range. The black car was expected to touch 200 mph. The extreme heat held all the competitors back a bit, but the speeds were still mighty impressive. On the first run from a roll the white car hit 180 mph and the black was just shy of 189. Impressive but down about 10 mph compared to the speeds hit at the same event last year. On the second run the black car clawed back a bit of speed and put up a 191-mph run. That was good enough to qualify first in the unlimited class.
That is some serious Viper performance.
The racing continued into the evening. The white Viper made it through the semi finals and into the final round. In the semis the black Viper suffered a broken axel and was eliminated. At this level you gotta pay to play. The car has about $200Kworth of modifications but putting out that kind of power, nothing is going to last forever. After two years of racing abuse it called it quits.
Time for the finals. The white Viper ACR was up against a Nissan GTR that happens to make 58 pounds of boost. The race came right down to the wire as both cars had strong clean runs. The winner was…Come on, we cannot give that away. You want to watch the video to checkout all the awesome racing, anyway don’t you? All the cars at this event are impressive and are worth watching. Of course, we were pulling for the Vipers all day and they put on a heck of a show.
Time to shake out the sofa cushions and see if we can find a quarter million dollars in loose change hiding somewhere so we can get one of these monsters for ourselves.
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