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We recently ran into the drag-and-drive duo of Ryan Hargett and Brent Sinclair at the 2022 Summit Midwest Drags. Ryan was busy working on a tune when we came by the pits, but Brent was kind enough to walk us through this 2011 Mustang with a twin-turbo 5.0L Coyote engine under the hood putting out 2,000+ horsepower.
Brent and Ryan are good friends, and happen to also live next door to one another in the Evansville, IN area. They share a race shop space on their properties, and Ryan is the owner of Hargett Automotive & Performance, an automotive repair shop offering brake and oil jobs to exhausts and wheel services to engine and performance work to tuning services, and more, which is just down the street. Brent helps out when and where he can, but also drivers and wrenches on his own SS Camaro (will be featured soon).
We came across both Ryan’s and Brent’s cars when the Midwest Drags came to Dragway 42 in West Salem, OH, which is just 40 minutes west of our offices in Akron. The 2011 Mustang had been catching our eye that whole week, and we finally got the rundown of the Coyote setup from Brent.
“Ryan and I built both of our cars side by side,” Sinclair says. “This Coyote is a Gen III block. All the machine work was done at TKM and features top fuel hoops, Gen I Boss heads, a stock Coyote Boss crank, a set of Manley 300M rods, and Diamond pistons. As far as timing components, it does have a full catalog of MMR front drive parts. It has more chains than brains. We’ve done everything to make sure that it does not have any issues.”
Helping the Coyote make some serious horsepower are twin 76/75mm Precision turbos, which Ryan dials in a tune with about 35-lbs. of boost in order to run mid-7 seconds in the quarter mile. At 42-lbs. of boost, Sinclair says Ryan’s Coyote makes 2,032 horsepower to the wheels, which is not f’ing around for this platform.
It’s pretty awesome,” Sinclair admits. “The motor is a stout piece.”
The Mustang itself is a 2011, which Ryan purchased in 2011 with only 5,000 miles on it. He and Brent cut it up immediately to turn it into a street/strip machine.
“We immediately made it into a race car,” he says. “Tin Soldier Racecars did the 25.3 chassis in it, and then pretty much everything Ryan and I worked on and completed. The transmission is an RPM-built 400 and its running a Holley smart wire system. The Holley ECU is a heavy unit, but offers a very nice package.”
During the race week, Ryan was running the Coyote consistently in the mid-7s, and has plenty of power to go into the low-7s. However, Sinclair told us there wasn’t much reason to push the car there in order to stay on top of the Super Street Small Block Power Adder class.
“He’s got plenty of power, he’s just being smart and making it through the week this week,” he says. “There’s no reason to beat its guts out.”
Ryan finished the Midwest Drags with an average ET of 7.577 at 185 mph. He got there thanks to ETs of 7.854 at 169 mph and 7.534 at 188 mph at Edgewater Motorsports Park, 7.543 at 188 mph and 7.534 at 187 mph at US 41 Motorplex, 7.562 at 188 mph and 7.517 at 189 mph at Dragway 42, and 7.542 at 187 mph and 7.533 at 184 mph at Edgewater Motorsports Park to close out his class victory.
This average now moves Ryan and his Mustang to 8th place on the Fastest 100 Drag-N-Drive Racers of 2022. This also gave Ryan the fastest ever average for Super Street Small Block Power Adder of all time!
Engine of the Week is sponsored by PennGrade Motor Oil, Elring – Das Original and Engine & Performance Warehouse Inc./NPW Companies. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder Editor Greg Jones at [email protected].
