The incredible John Kolivas has done it yet again, lowering his own eighth-mile record on the 275-width Mickey Thompson ET Street Radial Pro tire. The Mississippi resident has long been a proponent of radial-tire racing, singlehandedly demolishing the NMRA’s Drag Radial class to the tune of three championships before “retiring” and choosing to chase the big money at many of the country’s drag radial races.

In testing just recently at his home track, Holly Springs Dragstrip, Kolivas turned off the timers in his Southern Speed-built ’95 Mustang Cobra to the tune of a 4.34 at 172.28 MPH – a stunning number, especially when Marty Stinnett just broke Kolivas’ 4.39 record with a 4.38 a few weeks ago. Kolivas, who wears out the track surface at Holly Springs on a regular basis, credits a Precision Turbo-motivated twin-turbo Bennett Racing pushrod engine controlled by NLR Systems‘ AMS2000 boost controller as the main motivators behind his program. He’s also brought Mark Menscer of Menscer Motorsports onboard recently to assist with shock tuning, and we’d have to say his upgrades have been worth it.

We caught up with John on Monday morning to talk about his incredible accomplishment, and he explained, “We got onto a decent track and were able to make a good hit. I think we might have a little something more in it, especially if the conditions are perfect, but there’s no doubt about it – that’s a pretty strong pass. Saturday night we were on one that would have been even quicker but I had to get out of it at about half-track. When you’re trying to run this quick with a setup like this everything has to be right.” If you’re a fan of converting eighth-mile numbers to quarter-mile numbers, this converts to an easy 6.60’s pass, or maybe even quicker….on a 275-wide radial tire. Simply unreal.