Jarrod Wood’s Twin Turbo, Noonan-Powered Radial Corvette
As the sun began to set over Bradenton Motorsports Park in Florida, the golden light caught Jarrod Wood’s Radial vs The World Corvette. It’s damn enough close to performance as sculpture; an artwork of speed. Drag racing has a reputation for delivering vehicles that move as fast as they look, but if appearances are any indication then this Corvette is going to enter hyperspace.
Wood was first drawn into drag racing when he wanted to compete in Street Machine’s Drag Challenge event, the Australian version of Hot Rod’s Drag Week. He was a car guy already, but Drag Challenge opened his eyes to the addictive nature of the drag strip.
It didn’t take long for Wood to make an impression, as he built a Holden HQ one tonner specifically for the 2016 event. Running a 600 cubic inch big block Chev and a pair of Pro Mod-spec 88mm turbochargers, Wood made the quickest pass in the event’s history at the time, a 7.71 at 184mph – all while driving some 1500 kilometres over five days.
“I hadn’t really been involved with drag racing before that,” he said.
“Me and Andy at Specialised Power Porting built the car and Dandy Engines put together the big block for it. We had only a couple of days to get it sorted, yet we ended up running 7.71 on the last day of Drag Challenge and set the record.
“I’d had cars, but never drag cars. After running Drag Challenge I just wanted to go faster.”
It was the burgeoning radial drag racing scene that drew Wood’s attention. The growth of this wild genre of drag racing has been hard to miss over the past decade, having perhaps the greatest impact on doorslammer racing since the advent of Pro Mod.
“Radial racing is pure excitement because you don’t know what is going to happen,” Wood said. “There’s no wheelie bars, there’s big power, it’s so good.”
The ute had delivered faithfully at Drag Challenge, but had too much weight for radial racing, where getting the car moving at a dead hook is the priority.
“The HQ was way too heavy, it was like 4380 pounds in total,” Wood explained. Wood went in search of a more evolved race car in 2017 and found Kevin Mullins’ Ford Mustang for sale. The car was a former world record holder, having set fire to the radial record books in 2014 when Mullins dropped a 4.11/193mph pass at Lights Out V – when the record was still a 4.19.
Wood tested the car in the USA before shipping it back to Australia where the race was on for the first three second pass on radial tyres down under. At the time, the heavy hitters of the class were all chasing the mark, including Perry Bullivant, Matthew Grubisa and Daniel Pharris in Kyle Hopf’s Camaro.
With some more development from both Wood and Mullins’ TKM Performance, the Mustang tore up the record books once again when it delivered the first three second pass in Australian radial tyre history with a 3.99/196mph at the Kenda Radial Riot in September 2018.
“That was pretty cool to do,” Wood said. “Kevin was there which made it even more special. It was a bit different in the car because you don’t get to see the start line but from what I was told everyone was jumping around and going nuts, so it was pretty good to be the first.”
With one more item checked off his list, Wood was quickly off to the USA to compete in the 2018 running of No Mercy, where he drove Bill Schurr’s mad Hemi-powered Jeep in the X275 class. He followed up in March of 2019 when he shipped the Mustang back to the USA to take part in the unique Sweet 16 event. Run by Duck X Productions, the same promoter of the No Mercy and Lights Out meets, Sweet 16 is one of drag racing’s few equivalents of a pay-per-view show with spectator tickets limited to an expensive few and the race broadcast online.
Since its record pass in Australia, the Mustang had been lightened and equipped with a FuelTech FT600. There Wood clocked a 3.83/205mph, impressing in one of the oldest cars in the field. It was proving a reliable steed, but then a deal that was too good to refuse came up.
“Another one of Kevin’s good mates and customers had a new Corvette in the build, and he asked me if I wanted to buy it,” Wood said. “He realised it was going to be a bit too much work to run something like that, it’s not a holiday. I said to Kevin I was keen if he was keen.”
The C7 Corvette was a full tube chassis build right from the start, providing a modern base for the copious amounts of horsepower now possible. The Mustang wasn’t far off that either, but it still began its life in a factory.
“The Mustang started out as a street car. It had a lot of work and probably wasn’t even a three quarter car by the end, but it had the front chassis rails on it. It even had the tags still. If you want to be a frontrunner now you need a tube chassis and you need it to be light.”
The Corvette was sent to TKM Performance as a bare roller and Wood and Mullins took care of the rest. As a boilermaker by trade, Wood was well skilled to take care of the remaining fabrication and then learned more from Mullins on the motor side of things.
“We’ve built the two engines together. Kevin honed them and measured everything and then he showed me how to put them together. We got everything mounted and then sent the car off to paint at Hat Creek Customs just before No Mercy in 2019.”
Speaking of engines, the Australian influence would not only be felt in the driver’s seat, with Wood and Mullins choosing the Noonan 4.9 Hemi as their powerplant of choice, topped with two 98mm Precision turbos.
“The Noonan Hemi has been really good to work on, the way the heads come off in the car with the manifold still on,” Wood said. “It is a great engine and we are just starting to figure it out now. It has been specced by Kevin with the camshaft and what not. There’s a two-speed Turbo 400, we also have a three-speed, and a Neal Chance converter. It currently has a fabricated rear end but we are putting in one of Steve Ham’s billet rear ends, because it is nice kit and we want to try and support Australian people.”
The power figures being produced by the top Radial vs The World cars are reaching insane levels. Apart from rarely run Outlaw Pro Mod classes, they are likely the most powerful doorslammers in the world. Wood’s Corvette made 3600 horsepower at 36psi on the dyno, and that was just to make sure everything worked.
“The old 4.8 Noonan Hemi made 5200hp on other cars, so we think this motor will be over 5000hp horsepower at its peak. We just have to work out how to get from A to B.”
Wood described the Corvette as an accidental show car, thanks to the pristine billet of the Noonan motor combined with the RSM polished pipework. The whole car is decked out with titanium nuts and bolts thanks to Jarrod’s own WM Titanium Products business.
“The car is really light. We don’t have to be super light (the current weight limit for twin turbos in Radial vs The World is 2825 pounds) but we can move the weight where we need it.”
The whole car represents the rapid evolution of radial drag racing. This is a class where the world record dropped by over half a second in the space of five years, and that’s on the eighth mile. No other category has seen such incredible advances in pace.
“Everything has evolved,” Wood said. “The rear ends and the converters are probably the biggest part. It’s all a lot more reliable and so much development has gone into making radial cars fast. Turbo cars used to take forever to spool, but now in four or five seconds you are ready to leave. All the ECUs have come a long way and the track prep is a big thing as well. We are still trying to move a heavy weight forward fast, and that will always be the challenge.”
This article originally appeared in Drag News Magazine Issue 45.
