Third-gen Camaro Wheelstands Twice, Still Runs 6 Seconds

Power wheelies can go very wrong, but this driver carries his well down the track to a killer 6-second run.

“Surprise, you’re looking at the sky halfway down the racetrack!” Tom Mauro’s bright red third-generation Camaro Z28 may as well have said that when its nose bucked skyward well into a run at Maryland International Raceway.

During qualifying for the 22nd Imports vs. Domestic World Cup Finals, Mauro fed the power in to the “KILL” setting well after the starting line. The result was that he made it 330 feet before the front bumper took a peek at the sun.

To his credit, Mauro rode the bright red third-gen Camaro down only to have it carry the tires a couple hundred more feet. That’s an awful lot of wheelstand, but the F-Body still managed a bonkers 6.87-second run. That qualified 18th in the cut-throat Outlaw vs. Extreme class.

The Outlaw 10.5 Camaro won its first round on what was functionally a bye. However, the second round brought Mauro up against Isaias Rojas, whose 5-second 2JZ-powered Scion had qualified poorly in 21st.

Even with his best weekend run of 6.55 seconds, Tom was looking at Rojas’ bumper as the Scion ran a blistering 5.77 seconds. It’s hard to beat the quickest elapsed time of the whole event, it turns out.

So what powers this Camaro? No, it’s not an LS engine or even a Chevy. Mauro, who works for DiSomma Racing in New Jersey, runs a twin-turbo 521 cubic-inch Hemi! Oh, the blasphemy! We can forgive him, maybe, because the car looks like a proper Z28.

And because the build photos from JW Racing and Fabrication are absolutely drag-racing fabrication porn. Check out more of those photos right here. Hopefully, we’ll see Mauro’s Hemi-powered wheelstand machine again soon.

[Images: Power Automedia/SpeedVideo, JW Racing and Fabrication]