Paolo Guist Unleashes a 3.47 at 214 MPH Run in Radial Vs The World - NEW WORLD RECORD Leads 1st Day of Qualifying of Lights Out 16 at South Georgia Motorsports Park!
Nearly two decades ago, Donald ‘Duck’ Long noticed that one of the biggest groups of heads-up racing, Outlaw Drag Radial, wasn’t being given the amount of attention he felt they deserved.
So, he did something about it, and sixteen years after the ‘Lights Out’ event debuted at South Georgia Motorsports Park (SGMP), it remains a destination race for racers and fans where the wild and unpredictable happens, as well as many a record are set.
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After a few days of testing where several cars in the top tier Radial Versus The World (RVW) class toyed with low 3.5-second time slips in the eighth-mile distance, a weather front brought rain to SGMP on Wednesday, halting the final day of testing and bringing the fields back for the first round of qualifying on Thursday, February 20th.
The resulting cold temperatures from the cold front would mean amazing air and sub-sea level atmospheric conditions for Thursday qualifying. Could the track stay warm enough to result in some amazing runs?
Paolo Guist would be the lone car to dip into the 3.4-second range in RVW during the first session, clocking a 3.498 at 213.60 MPH blast for the top qualifying spot. The impressive run was just twelve thousandths of-a-second off the world record of 3.486 at 213.83 MPH from ‘Stevie Fast’ Jackson, set last March at Alabama International Dragway. But Guist wasn’t done yet.
With the sun all but gone and track temperatures dropping quickly, the entire list of heads-up classes had completed their first session of qualifying. But the decision was made for one more round of RVW qualifying. Guist would be in the first pair of cars out of the staging lanes, lining up alongside a former Lights Out event winner, Ken Quartuccio.
As the pair of ’69 Camaros left the line, both stayed glued to the concrete surface. Less than three and-a-half seconds later, history had been made, when the 3.479 at 214.42 MPH pass from Guist lit the right-side scoreboards, signaling a new world record! Thanks to a 3.497 at 211.33 MPH lap from Quartuccio, the pass would also go in the record books as the quickest side-by-side eighth-mile pass in drag radial history.
Watch the video here:
Lights Out is scheduled for two more days of qualifying on Friday, February 21st and Saturday, February 22nd, with eliminations starting on the 22nd as well. A total of twelve classes will be contested during the event, including the street-car based Street Car Braggin Rights class. Flo Racing will cover the event on live stream.
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine, FloRacing, Duck X Productions and E3Xtreme, video courtesy of Straight Line Media.
If you have thoughts / feedback / ideas, please e-mail us at derek@sickthemagazine.com