The Viper is a car whose suspension ect is not (optimized)set up for drag racing .Any 18 year old kid with 15 grand and a Mustang can beat most Vipers on the road at the strip because of this reason.(Your local one Wend head over to E-TOWN for test and tune night .You will see Mustangs drive in from the street by teens running low 10s ,and some 9s and even 8s )To put it in perspective a friend of mines Mustang makes 425 to the flywheel yet runs 10.9 because the car is set up to drag.To run 9s in a Viper your not only going to need the power but the safety equiptment (cage ,batter switch shaft loops parachute ect )slicks skinnys drag shocks and the most important factor a great driver.Ps as i posted earlyier you also should have money put aside for gears and a tranny because 900 horsepower and 1.4 sixty foot times dont get along too well on these parts.
Kid with a Mustang and $15K? You're meaning a stock old Viper right? One of my girlfriends has a stock Mustang GT and a 'tune'. she goes 13.4 at the track. She won't be beating any Vipers except stock Gen1s even if she adds a supercharger kit.
Have you ever looked at a Mustang rear tire??? They are dogs on street tires. The Supersnakes are dangerous and slow because they come with skinny tires. The Viper comes with the widest stickiest stock tires in the world!!! The new ZR1 even had to change from Goodyears to Michelin to get traction. I love it that GM had to buy DODGE Tires for their car!!!
I guess we should listen to your comments on how the 13 sec Mustangs are "optimized for drag racing?" Say, the OLD Pustang IIs were also optimized for drag racing, weren't they? The old 6 cyl Valiants won't go 10 sec but I guess they had leaf springs as that is the prefered Drag suspension? New mustangs come with Coil springs and old Chevy 5 link suspensions. They invented TRACTION BARS because those junkers wheel hopped so badly. My Buddies GT500 just went in for a $5000 rear suspension upgrade. Turns out the 'HOT' Shebly GT500s also wheel hop insanely. That's why so many tuners build suspension upgrade kits for them. Do a search.
The Ultimate drag suspension was a set of Biased controlled springs that came on RR, GTX, R/Ts, Darts and Dusters. I remember the Motown Missile with it's Leaf link suspension back in the mic 70's. Having built Ladder Bar, Leaf Link, Pros Stock springs and 4 link suspensions in my cars I can tell you that the Leaf Link susp. was the best street suspension (with Mts or Sprint car tires), while at the track 4 link or Ladder Bars were the best. Stock, nothing compares to the Biased controlled springs invented by Dodge. Even the Mustangs came with Leaf springs in the old High Performance days.
I am amazed that anyone would say that a 10 sec. street car isn't "optimized for drag racing". Although wheel hop is easily attainable, 10 seconds on street tires is mind boggling. Anyone saying otherwise obviously KNOWS NOTHING about drag racing. Although the PS2s are amazing on the Road courses you can read manyn threads on this site about the huge traction improvement of the PS2s. Call JonB (most knowledgeable tire guy in VCA?) and ask him how much better the PS2s are than the PS1s. He told me they are an improvement of 40%!
Our Vipers, STOCK, are faster than the NHRA and IHRA rules will allow us to go. That the Vipers and Z06/ZR1 vettes are only allowed to go 11.5 at the race track pretty much says it all as far as I'm concerned. NHRA is telling us that our stock cars are faster than most race cars and they don't want us on their track without a rollbar and various other safety equipment added. STOCK Vipers and some corvettes are TOO fast for legal drag racing.
Ted