Bruder Brothers Smash X275 Record! 4.29@171MPH!

For many of you, this may be your introduction to the Bruder Brothers, so I need to give you a little background before we dive into this video. Nick and Rich Bruder are very well known in the world of small tire racing. For years, they’ve built a reputation so legendary that they’ve been immortalized with their own phrase. Allow me to elaborate.

Both brothers, along with their dad, share the workload of running the car. They don’t bring a huge crew of experts to the track, yet they always manage to push their combination to ET’s so quick they earn themselves penalties in the way of added weight, and on more than on occasion have gotten and entire combination banned or so heavily penalized that nobody else would dare try to run it. There is more than one combination within the X275 rules that have been “Brudered”, rendering them basically obsolete.

They just know how to go fast, regardless of the combination, and they do it own their own without “buying” it by hiring outside help and exotic parts. Instead, they work tirelessly to learn everything about their chosen combination, currently a roots blown small block, and extract every ounce of potential, pushing their trademark blue Fox Body hatchback ever quicker.

At last weekend’s Outlaw Street Car Reunion 5 in at historic Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the Bruders found the right combination of air, traction, and power to take a swing at the X275 record. Coming into the race, the record was Shane Fisher’s 4.35 seconds from last season, with a few other cars having been in the high 4.30’s and a pile of cars having been deep in the 4.40’s. X275 is known as a class where lowering the record typically happened by a hundredth of a second at a time, hardly ever seeing the record drop by a large margin. During the OSCR, the perfect mix of air and Tyler Crossnoe track prep allowed Jimmy White, Eric Moore and Shane Fisher to all three run 4.35’s, but late Saturday night, the Bruders stepped to the plate and knocked the record so far out of reach for anybody else that it may well stand for the next calendar year.

Late Saturday night, Nick slowly motioned Rich into the beams and stepped back to watch the car lay down a pass that only the Brothers themselves could have known was coming. With the blower cramming the chilly Kentucky air into the DiSomma Racing Engines built powerplant, Rich took the green light and the world watched as the car blasted to the class’ first 4.20 pass, lighting up the boards with an unheard of 4.287 at an equally-mind blowing 171 MPH. To have a blower car out-MPH even the quickest turbo cars in the class just proves how lethal the Bruders are when they unleash their full potential. It seems likely they’ll be heavily penalized before the next race, likely forcing them to change combinations again, but rest assured, if they do have to change, it will only be a matter of time before that setup is knocking on the door of history too, because that’s just what the Bruders do.

Thanks as always to Hans at Free Life Films for his awesome footage from the event, and a special thank you to Bill Robaey, who keeps up with the numbers for X275 as well as most other small tire heads up classes. Without you guys, I’d be dead in the water!