Black Shadow “Just Too Quick!”
In a sport renowned for having the quickest and fastest race cars in the world, Perth drag racer Steve Aldridge faced the challenge of taking his “Black Shadow”’55 Chevrolet quicker than the Supercharged Outlaws performance limit.
Aldridge qualified the Crown Security Outlaw in the top spot, handing him a solo pass in the first round of eliminations, but in what he labelled as a rookie mistake, he pushed the car to an astounding 6.459 second elapsed time, four thousandths of a second quicker than the 6.50 second limit.
“We were really disappointed to have made such a simple mistake, but when you consider that we’ve only done thirty passes in this car, and only seven of them have been in eliminations where we’ve had to pick our dial-in, so I guess we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves for under-predicting how well the car would go!” a jovial Aldridge said.
The Crown Security CEO is no stranger to running into the 6.40’s after licensing the car with a 6.47 at the beginning of last season in his first full-track pass down the quarter mile.
“It’s a tough decision to button off the throttle to stay slower than 6.50 when every racer at heart is in this sport to go quick!”
And despite the potential in the car to go beyond the mid-six second range, Aldridge is dismissive about stepping up to Group 2 Competition where performance limitations would be a thing of the past.
“Look we’ve by no means got a handle on this car and what it could do. Basically we’re learning race by race why it does what it does, based on what Maurice (Brennan) has showed us,” Aldridge said, giving credit to his Crown Security team mate who campaigns the World’s Quickest Commodore.”
“We’ll keep taking direction from him until we can stand on our own feet, but until then we’re happy to be enjoying our racing and living the dream!”
The Crown Security Black Shadow Chev will be at the famed Goldenstates event on November 16 and 17 at the Perth Motorplex.
Story by bennie@benzpress.com Photo by FullyAutomotive.com
