In the world of street-legal drag-racing machines, the name Sal Patel is well known. The man has been racing his 1999 Dodge Viper for years now, and he's earned a lot of "World's Fastest" titles. His mean machine is known as the Outlaw Drag Radial Viper, and it's the fastest rear-wheel-drive vehicle to cover a half-mile, according to WannaGoFast, the organization that puts on the events the car competes in.
Under the hood is the familiar Viper V-10, but Patel's breathes through a pair of massive 90 mm turbochargers. Instead of a 6-speed manual gearbox backing up the engine, Patel swapped in a powerglide transmission. The rest of the interior, however, is there to make it somewhat livable.
It's the first car with an independent rear suspension to break into the 6-second range in the quarter mile. That half-mile speed record? Sal posted a 234.86 mph, though his YouTube video says 237 mph.
In the video above, Patel can be seen running well over 200 mph in all three of his passes at the WannaGoFast 1/2 Mile Shootout held July 29-30, 2017 at the Ingalls Field Airport in Hot Springs, Virginia.
What might be even more amazing is the fact that this very car was in a hard crash back in 2013. Patel and his team didn't chuck it in the dumpster, though. Instead, they worked hard and put it back together so that the Outlaw Drag Radial Viper rides on today.
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