The World's Quickest Manual Hellcat Challenger Gets Quicker

Back in February, we highlighted the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat owned by Jon Sipple, which was the the quickest in the world with the 6-speed manual transmission and the first 3-pedal Hellcat car to get into the 10 second ¼ mile range. Since then, Sipple put a few more miles – and a few new modifications – into his Mopar muscle car. This past weekend, he headed to Darlington Dragway to see how the Challenger liked the new goodies and the result was a big drop in 1/4 mile times – along with a new record for the quickest manual transmission Hellcat Challenger.

Jon Sipple’s Challenger
Back in February, Jon Sipple was the first to put a manual transmission Hellcat Challenger into the 10-second ¼ mile range, with a best time of 10.86 making his the quickest manual Hellcat car in the world. That record run was made with a very short mod list, including just a cold air intake, a stronger driveshaft, drag radial tires, a canned ECU tune and a light cooling charge of nitrous.

Since then, Sipple took his Hellcat Challenger to Mass Acceleration in Denver, North Carolina for a custom engine tune that makes the most of a 100 shot of nitrous, but nothing else has changed since his record runs in February.

So, how much difference does a good tune and a 100 shot of nitrous make on the world’s quickest Hellcat Challenger with a manual transmission?

Well, on Sipple’s first run out with the new setup, his Challenger laid down a 10.71 at 131.62 miles per hour – comfortably beating his previous best time. On the second run of the day, he slowed down a little and ran a 10.84 (still quicker than the previous record), but on his third run of the day, he got a solid launch and a big pull on the top end to run an awesome 10.6256 at 133.61 miles per hour.

There is good news, bad news and good news about the results of Jon Sipple’s weekend at the track with his Hellcat Challenger. The good news, of course, is that his 10.62 shatters his old record for the quickest manual transmission Hellcat Challenger in the world. The bad news is that the clutch in his Challenger is beginning to slip at wide open throttle with the nitrous, so he will soon be heading to Modern Muscle Extreme in Martinsville, Virginia for a heavy duty replacement which will better handle the massive amounts of power being made by his supercharged, bottled Hemi.

That brings us to the other good news. Once Sipple has a clutch that will hold all of the power, we can almost surely expect his times to drop and with them – the record for the quickest manual transmission Hellcat Challenger in the world will drop as well.

The video below shows Jon Sipple’s Hellcat Challenger beating up an 11-second Firebird.

Image Courtesy of Britany Kahle/BJK Photography