Keith Berry’s Proline-built Corvette wasn’t even assembled ten days before Lights Out 7 — then it beat the best radial racers in the country. Behind a fresh 487ci small block and twin 98mm turbochargers, Berry ran an untested combination straight into a final-round holeshot over Stevie Jackson’s Hemi-powered Mustang. It’s one of drag radial racing’s boldest wins.
This twin turbo Proline C5 Chevrolet Corvette piloted by Keith Berry is no slouch, and his recent win at Duck X’s Lights Out 7 in Southern Georgia is a testament to what it takes to WIN! .. Watch the FINAL RACE .. it is BADASS!!!
Seventy-two hours before qualifying opened for a $50,000-to-win grudge match against the fastest radial-tire cars in the country, Keith Berry’s championship Corvette wasn’t even fully assembled. Most racers would have called it a lost cause. Berry and his crew had other ideas, tearing into a fresh engine combination they’d never even tested on track and betting everything on it working right the first time. What happened next turned a black C5 Corvette into one of the most talked-about cars in drag radial history. The question wasn’t whether Berry’s gamble would pay off — it was how big the payoff would be.
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An Untested Engine, an Impossible Deadline
With barely ten days before Lights Out 7, Berry sourced a 487-cubic-inch small block built around a billet CN block and a set of Chris Farrar Engines’ latest SBX cylinder heads. The engine went straight to Bell Chassisworks in Woodstock, Georgia, where it was mated to a pair of 98mm Precision turbochargers and dropped into the Proline-built Corvette chassis. There was no shakedown pass, no dyno session to fall back on — just a car, a clock, and one of outlaw racing’s biggest paydays on the line.
A Holeshot for the Ages
Berry’s Corvette powered through the eighth-mile in the low-3.90s during eliminations, setting up a final round against Stevie Jackson’s roots-blown, Hemi-powered Fox Body Mustang known as ‘The Shadow.’ Rather than out-muscle Jackson on raw power, Berry beat him off the line with a holeshot that held up all the way to the stripe, claiming the Radial vs. the World title at Donald Long’s Lights Out 7. It remains one of the more remarkable wins in drag radial racing: an engine combination assembled under deadline pressure, run for the first time at the biggest race of the year, and good enough to beat the best in the business. The victory cemented Berry’s reputation as one of the sport’s most fearless tuners, willing to stake a season on a combination nobody else had dared to run untested.
A Career Built on Calculated Risk
Berry wasn’t a newcomer taking a lucky swing — he’d already built a reputation on the NMCA circuit before ever showing up at Lights Out, and the Lights Out 7 win became one of the signature moments of his career. Stories like this one are part of why Donald Long’s Lights Out series became must-watch events for drag radial fans: unpredictable outcomes, untested combinations, and racers willing to bet a season’s worth of work on a single pass down the track.
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