These Muscle Cars Just Ran 5-Second Quarter-Miles at 245 MPH — Then Had to Drive Themselves 128 Miles to the Next Track

At HOT ROD Drag Week, cars aren’t allowed to trailer between tracks — every quarter-mile pass has to be followed by a real highway drive to the next stop. On day one of the 2026 event at Route 66 Raceway, that didn’t stop two drivers from breaking into the 5-second zone for the first time in seven years, with a Camaro right on their heels.

Most cars that run a quarter-mile in under six seconds never see a public road. They get trailered to the strip, make one violent pass, and get trailered right back home. The field at HOT ROD Drag Week doesn’t get that mercy. Every car has to qualify at one track, survive the drive to the next one, and do it again for five days straight. On day one of the 2026 event at Route 66 Raceway outside Chicago, two drivers broke into the 5-second zone for the first time anywhere in seven years, then turned around and pointed their cars down the highway toward a dragstrip 128 miles away. One of them was driving a Camaro. The other has already rewritten the record book for street-legal drag cars twice.

Living Nitro’s recap of day one captures exactly what makes Drag Week different from every other form of drag racing: the tension of watching a car survive both the burnout and the burn ride afterward. The video runs through the afternoon session at Route 66 Raceway, where four cars that have already proven capable of a 5-second pass lined up under ideal conditions, with temperatures sitting in the upper 60s, about as good as drag racing weather gets in mid-September.

The morning hadn’t gone nearly as well. Larry Larson ran a 6.040 and Ned Dunphy ran a 6.047, both agonizingly close to the 5s but not quite there. Jeff Lutz had it worse: his brand-new Noonan Hemi combination broke a connecting rod, and he was out of the event before lunch. It’s the kind of detail that explains why Drag Week entrants call it a war of attrition as much as a race — the fastest car in the field is worthless if it can’t survive all five days.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Rule That Makes Drag Week Different From Every Other Race

Drag Week isn’t a single race, it’s a five-day, multi-track gauntlet where every competitor has to drive their car on public roads between stops, no trailers allowed. A car that runs 5.97 seconds at 244 mph on a Monday has to be street-legal enough to survive a 100-plus-mile highway drive on Tuesday, then do it again for three more days after that. That single rule is why so few cars have ever cracked the 5-second barrier in the class’s history. Building a car that fast is one problem. Building one that can also handle a gas station fill-up and a stretch of interstate is a completely different one.

HOT ROD Magazine started Drag Week back in 2005 as a way to prove that a fast car could still be a real car — something you could drive to work, not just something that gets rolled out of a trailer for six seconds at a time. Two decades later, it’s become the closest thing muscle car culture has to a moon landing: a handful of teams spend all year chasing records that only count if the car survives a full week of racing and driving, back to back, rain or shine. That’s exactly why a 5-second pass here means more than the same number would at a normal race — anyone can build something quick for one run. Almost nobody can build something quick five days in a row.

The Muscle Cars Chasing the Fastest Trucks on the Planet

Larry Larson is a big reason the 5-second barrier exists as a benchmark at all. He’s a five-time Drag Week champion who first made his name behind the wheel of a Chevy II Nova, the car that broke Drag Week into the 6-second zone for the first time in the event’s history. He later moved on to the vehicle he’s driving now, a 1998 Chevy S-10 pickup that became the first street-legal car ever to run a 5-second quarter-mile. On day one at Route 66 Raceway, that S-10 ran a 5.977 at 244 mph, edging out Ned Dunphy’s 5.994 at 245 mph by just 17-thousandths of a second, run only two minutes apart. Those were the second and third 5-second passes in Drag Week history, coming within moments of each other after a seven-year drought since Tom Bailey’s record-setting run.

But the trucks weren’t the only story. Bryant Goldstone’s Camaro ran a 6.073 at 245 mph, matching the top speed of both leaders and setting up a genuine three-way fight heading into the rest of the week — a reminder that Drag Week’s Unlimited class, however dominated by purpose-built trucks and dragster-style builds, still has room for a proper muscle car to run with the fastest machines on the property. Further down the order, Nick Rinehart brought a genuine 6-second Nova to the event and still found himself off his own pace with a 7.486, Michael Manuel’s Camaro led the Modified class outright with a 7.682, and Jeremiah Kirby ran a 7.767 in a naturally aspirated Pro Street Chevelle. None of them needed a turbo or a Noonan Hemi to be fast at Drag Week, just a car built to take a beating.

Not Everyone Made It to Day Two

Attrition showed up everywhere outside the Unlimited class, too. Calvin Hayward ran a strong 7.461 at 204 mph in Super Street Big Block Power Adder, then went off into the sand trap when his parachute failed to deploy. Shaun Skipper and Nick Cryer both posted personal bests in Unlimited at 6.832 and 6.859, and Les Smith topped the tricky radial-tire Ultimate Iron class with a 6.650. Jason Rousseau, driving Mark Sussino’s Pontiac Grand Prix, led the Street Race Small Block Power Adder class with an 8.507. And in a moment that will matter more to the record books than the highlight reels, Ryan Majchrowski nailed a perfect 10.000-second pass in Street Machine Eliminator, the first time anyone has hit that exact number in the class’s history.

Once the times were locked in, the real Drag Week ritual began: the 128-mile drive from Route 66 Raceway to Byron Dragway, with the field stopping along the way at Roosty’s Chicken and the Amboy Depot Museum. It’s a strange contrast that only makes sense if you’ve followed the event before — cars that just ran 244 mph in the quarter-mile, cruising past a small-town museum on a two-lane Illinois highway, engines that cost more than most houses idling at a stop sign next to a chicken joint. The forecast for day two at Byron wasn’t promising, and as always in drag-and-drive racing, none of Monday’s numbers count for anything until a car has survived all five days.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.