Natural Wonder

Bama Performance set the mark for quickest naturally aspirated 2015 GT—then the car ran 9s with nitrous

By Steve Turner
Photos by Bama Performance

Surprisingly the battle for Internet performance milestones with the 2015 Mustang hasn’t yet reached a frenzy yet. Perhaps the enthusiasm was dampened when Ford Racing set the bar with its .99 Challenge before the cars even arrived on dealer lots. However, it looks like that’s all about to change.

The crew at Bama Performance set out to create a new milestone for naturally aspirated Coyote S550s with its in-house project car. As such, they got down to business with a carefully selected list of mods. Chief among the modifications was the addition of one of its own 93-octane tunes delivered by an SCT Performance X4 handheld tuner.

The combo Bama’s tuning is designed to maximize consists of the following hardware:

• Custom 1 7/8-inch long-tube headers
• An off-road X-pipe
• Race Bullet Mufflers
• A JLT cold-air intake

Of course, with the increased power offered by these mods, the Bama team added some upgrades to the suspension. Those remain a secret at the moment, but they did retain the stock IRS bushings and halfshafts (more on that later). They did bolt on a full set of 17-inch Weld RTS drag wheels with Mickey Thompson skinnies up front and Hoosier slicks out back.

They also removed the passenger and rear seats, which got the race weight down the 3,650 pounds with the driver strapped in and a half tank of the 93-octane fuel.

The results were definitely impressive. You can see the run here:

If you watched the video, you know it was fortunate the Bama 2015 Mustang ran so well on its first pass down Maryland International Raceway’s well-prepped surface. Fortunate, because on its second pass the car snapped a stock halfshaft—they found the weakest link.

Naturally, the Bama crew quickly replaced the stock halfshafts with more robust replacements from The Driveshaft Shop, so the car was ready to head back to the track. They didn’t stop there, however, they bolted on a Boss 302 manifold, and replaced the stock driveshaft with a more durable one-piece, carbon-fiber unit from The Driveshaft Shop. They returned to the track with that combo to break their own naturally aspirated e.t. record. On Saturday November 15, the Bama team indeed cracked that record wide open with a 10.6-second naturally aspirated run.

The next piece of the puzzle for this car was a 150hp hit of nitrous. With that, the Bama Performance team sought to make its project car the quickest 2015 Mustang GT in the world with a 10.4-second run at 129 mph. You can watch the record-setting run right here:

Bama Performance returned to MIR on November 20th with that combo and its project car became the first 2015 Mustang to run in the 9-second zone:

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