How much muscle, or speed, for that matter, is too much for a stick shift? This Ford Mustang has a rather extreme answer to that question, since the H pattern beast recently managed to dive into the six-second quarter-mile arena, setting multiple records in the process.
While attending the FL2K21 event held on Florida’s Bradenton Motorsports Park last week, the S197 pony managed to deliver a 6.98s pass, with a trap speed of 193 mph (310.7 km/h) and you’ll find this in the YouTube video below.
This means that Joel Steele, the one working the clutch, went home with three accolades: the first 6s stick shift domestic, the fastest stick shift Ford and the fastest stick shift Coyote.
The tranny taking all that abuse is a T56 six-speed build by North Carolina-based Tick Performance, which channels the muscle coming from a heavily massaged (twin-turbocharged) incarnation of the Coyote version that animates the Boss 302.
Next up, it was time for an even sharper pass, which saw the red pony duking it out with Brett Lasala’s also-heavily-massaged S197, albeit with the latter packing an automatic. This was a grudge race (no numbers shown) and, as you’ll notice in the Instagram video below, it looks like Joel took the big W. More importantly, he bested his previous numbers, pulling a 6.95s stunt at 202 mph (305.2 km/h).
From the flame-spitting to details such as the lightweight windows, there are plenty of details that can keep an enthusiast gazing at this Blue Oval monster for more than anybody would like to admit.
However, if you ask us, the way in which the Mustang gets off the line is its most impressive feat—we can only imagine the amount of work required to dial in the custom suspension setup the machine packs—so this is a big one for team #savethemanuals.
As those of you who follow such adventures have probably guessed by now, this sort of adventure doesn’t stop easily, so expect to see more of this H pattern insanity in the future.
