Brad Edwards Makes History with 3.85 at 200 MPH

With a car infinitely more stock than those of his competition, Brad Edwards belted out an unbelievable 3.85 at 200 mph at the increasingly prestigious and always wild Lights Out event at South Georgia Motorsports Park. "That's the pass we've been telling people all year the car had in it," Edwards said. "We just had a lot to get sorted out. We found some weight-distribution problems, got those corrected, and then just started pouring the power to it."



Edwards' twin-turbocharged powerplant pounds the ground, and he controls it all with Holley EFI. "It's easy to use, and for the price point, you can't beat it," Edwards said. "Pound for pound and dollar for dollar, there's no other EFI that can touch Holley's. And it isn't just the price. For a car like this, you don't get something because it costs less – you use what works the best. And this works the best. What I really like about it is the flexibility. I can create any realistic number of inputs and outputs. I went in myself, and with some common sense built some EGT and 02 safety tables. It sucks timing out, adds fuel in, and really saves parts. It's an active table. It's not like it hits the correction and that's it. It's a fully functioning, live table. It's not something I'm that used to in the racing world, to be honest. It's the only box in my car that has this kind of user flexibility."



With Holley controlling everything under the hood, Edwards made a truly landmark run, the quickest ever for a true stock suspension 315 Drag Radial machine. Edwards, best known as the first in the three-second zone with his historic 3.99 three years ago in Huntsville, Ala., smashed his latest barrier with a twin-turbocharged '97 Mustang Cobra tuned by Peter Harrell of Harrell Engine & Dyno. And it's not just what Edwards did, but that he did it on a budget a fraction the size of many of his rivals. Not only is Edwards' 200-mph missile not a purpose-built Pro Mod-style machine; it actually has the original VIN under the fiberglass dash.



"It's not a chassis car," Edwards said. "It's not even a tube-chassis car that they lowered the factory body back over after building an all-new chassis." Unlike his competitors cars, which began their lives on a chassis jig and have never run on anything but a drag strip, Edwards' machine once prowled city streets. It makes his performance even more amazing, and which also makes it one of the hardest cars to drive in all of drag racing.

"Wherever the car is pointed when I let go of the button is where it's going to go," Edwards said. "It's not like you can steer if the front end isn't on the ground. You can't really drive it until the gear change, when the front end comes down. When it's 11 at night and the track is killer, I can go to war with anyone. When it's 2 in the afternoon and the sun is shining on the track, I don't have the chassis to keep the tire stuck. I've got 60 percent of the weight on the nose – not 50/50, like the 'Pro Mod' cars do. I have to be right on the edge all the time."