Osprey goes 9.9 with a DAW hybrid turbo

Finally, after a few setbacks this season, JLO, the Osprey shop car, has finally made its first 9 sec pass at Santa Pod. Amazingly on an unprepped track too.

The day started off nice and early with a solid test pass of 10.01 sec @ 139mph, the car was in it's basic setup and new test tune, so just the seats out for weight reduction and a replacement Tillett seat for the driver, a set of Hoosier DR2 drag tyres and a half tank of VP MS109 blended up to to E35, so nowhere near racing weight or tune-up we would normally start off with, after all, it was an unprepped surface we were dealing with and we were only attending the Ultimate Street Car event to promote Osprey Performance.

After a successful grudge race against "instafamous" Marky in the afternoon (who also ran 9s recently with his M140) we turned the car around and got it cooled off and reset for a last test pass late on the afternoon.

My normal procedure in the pairing lanes involves priming JLOs methanol system which involves me holding the rpm at 3000 and pressing a priming button, this makes her grumble a bit as the engine rpm comes back down to idle speed, quite an intimidating sound if you don't know what it is. This time however I didn't prime it, I was treating this as just a test pass again for data, so I didn't even turn the meth injection system on.

Rowdy burnout complete, JLO staged shallow and I watched the tree light up. I built boost and felt her squat ready for green, I decided to use anti-lag this run which instantly built boost up to 16psi when I pressed it, at this point its almost 2 seconds since the tree dropped green and I let go of the button.

JLO planted my helmet hard into the Tillett headrest pad and hooked up traction instantly, I was slingshot past the 60ft in 1.55 seconds while grabbing 3rd gear, there was a slight jolt and the rpm claimed straight back up to 7200rpm and I clicked in 4th gear, this is JLOs power gear, it gets us through the 1/8th mile in 6.4 seconds and feels like a jet fighter at this point trying to take off. The front gets quite light into 5th and I have to tweak the steering to keep her in the groove, I I load in 6th just after the 1000ft marker and I see that she still wants to pull, normally I hit 6th and cross the line or I hold onto 5th at 7500rpm depending, this time, I had more ground to cover before the end. This meant I had either short shifted or the first few gears were really quick and I bought myself real-estate for MPH over the finish line, it was the latter.

The nose dips and I'm slowly on the anchors.

My phone is already ringing, it's Harvey Bhogal, the driver of the fastest M140 in the UK, I've got my helmet off at this point and turned around towards the pits. He's ecstatic, confirming what I had suspected.

He was in the stands and watching and recording. JLO had just ran a 9.93sec 1/4 mile at pod. We are now only 0.04 away from the fastest hybrid turbo pass in the UK and 0.13 from the world record. I'm sure once we have good weather and a prepped track that JLO will go deeper into the 9s. Thanks to everyone involved with this car, ally the Osprey team, all 4 of you, the awesome tuning done by Aiman from HLC, the Ultra responsive and ever surprising hybrid turbo from DAW and the epic no bull-shit taking HP50 transmission from PDS. These results are a testament to the companies involved that "less" can achieve more when it's done correctly.

Peace ✌️

Chris