Pedaling A Wheelie & Still Going 8s! Nitrous Nova

Huge wheelies are cool. They aren’t exactly conducive to extracting the quickest ET out of your car, especially if you have to lift to keep the rear bumper off the asphalt, but they look cool and give the fans something to cheer about, as long as you don’t let the nose slam down and bust the oil pan, resulting in a lengthy cleanup.

While they may not always result in the quickest ET’s, some cars do work better when leaving in a wheelstand and, if you can find that perfect balance that will let the car carry the wheels without coming up too high, a wheelstand doesn’t necessarily mean you’re leaving ET on the table. There is a lot of physics and math involved that I’m not going to get into – mainly because I don’t exactly understand it all myself – but there are plenty of cars who run their best ET’s on wheels-up passes, as long as they can keep their right foot planted.

Sometimes, though, you just have to send it and find out where your suspension setup is so you can start tweaking it to find that balance between wheels up, but not too far up. This black Chevy II is doing just that, starting off the day with a massive wheels-up launch that requires the driver to lift and keep the car from dragging the bumper. Thanks to the stellar pedal job, he still manages to lay down a pretty respectable 8.85 at 154 MPH, but as we all know, if you’re out of the throttle at any point during the run, there’s some ET left on the table, so they make some adjustments to the car and bring it back around for another shot. The second pass results in a smaller wheelstand, but the driver also pedaled the gas early, likely a little spooked following the first pass. The car lays down an 8.72 at 155 MPH, showing that it was happier with the shorter wheelstand.

The third pass it sounds like maybe the nitrous bottle ran out or something was amiss in the tuneup, with an off-pace 9-second ET popping up, so that was likely a throw-away run that ended the day.