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Matthew Tibbetts |
Civil servant Matthew Tibbetts was introduced to the sport of drag racing while studying in Tampa, Florida. Looking back he reflects that they ran their street cars at the local strip, “We didn’t know a lot about how to race them but it was fun and it was safe.”
He says when he learned that a drag strip was being built in Grand Cayman he was, “very excited.”
His record-breaking black Pontiac Firebird very nearly went for scrap after Ivan, but Matthew decided that it was not only salvageable but the basis for a car to run at Breakers Speedway.
Between February and August last year he painstakingly worked on installing the equipment needed. “It took a lot of my spare time and involved a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” he remembers.
The already high performance engine gained a single turbo charger, running a relatively modest 3psi boost, and a 125bhp wet nitrous kit. The parts came piece by piece and required a lot of work to install. As the car already had a high compression ratio Matthew admits he was nervous about it all holding together but the results speak for themselves.
On a chassis dynomometer, the car produced just under 500bhp with nitrous and 407bhp without, despite ignition problems at the time.
The transmission did not fare so well and, after blowing four rear ends, a Ford 9 inch axle was installed.
The car, which holds both ends of its class record at 7.103 seconds at 101.1 mph, is completely street legal and used daily. Asked if he ever considered running a pure race car Matthew laughed and said that, apart from the expense, it would take all the fun out of the sport.
