Special Section - AThe Long Road to the 5-second Doorslammer Pass

In those early days it was truly a "run what ya brung" class. Most of the rules for the class applied to basic safety concerns and minimum weight.

As the speeds and elapsed times of the cars continually improved, especially for those cars powered by supercharged engines, the IHRA adopted rules aimed at handicapping the blown Pro Mods.

The only problem was that supercharged engine builders were smarter than the rule makers. Racers, especially Jim Oddy and Scotty Cannon, dominated the class as far as performance went. Almost every e.t. record between 6.99 and Mitch Stott's 5.98 standard was set by cars using a supercharged engine for power.

Although few in numbers, the supercharged racers had a presence in the class from the start.

In 1989, before there was Pro Modified, Jim Oddy, Fred Hahn and their famous "Black Mariah" supercharged Top Sportsman 'Vette (photo) ran a 6.69/205.58. That lap created

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such an uproar among the nitrous racers that the Top Sportsman rules were rewritten after that season, effectively outlawing that one car from IHRA competition.

The elapsed times dropped rapidly from the time Tommy Howes ran the first six, with quite a few cars running 6.90's, but Fred Hahn's 6.63 in 1991 leap-frogged a lot of times, basically skipping the 6.80's and 6.70's, going directly to the 6.60's.

From 1991 until 2000 Fred Hahn, Scotty Cannon, Bill Kuhlmann and Australian Victor Bray took turns taking Pro Mods toward a five-second lap, recording elapsed times in the 6.50 range. The assault on the fives starting getting really serious when Carl Petersen probably became the first cars in the 6.40's when he ran a 6.47 with his blown rat-motored Chevelle in 1994. The first 6.30 lap apparently can be credited to Kuhlmann, who ran a 6.341 in early 1994. The first in the twenties would probably be Bray, who ran a then otherworldly 6.254/225 in Australia in 1996.

Scotty Cannon was almost the first to the 'teens running a 6.20 flat in a match race against Oddy & Hahn at Englishtown in 1999. Fred Hahn was the first IHRA legal Pro Mod in the 'teens when he drove the team's supercharged, wedge-powered '37 supercharged Chevy to a 6.179/227 in Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada at an IHRA national event in 2000.

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