Glidden Tinkers His Way To Career-Best In Extreme 10.5 At PBIR

The tinkering continues for Billy Glidden and the Extreme 10.5 legend has a new personal-best run to show for it.

In the third qualifying session of the ADRL Safety-Kleen Spring Drags II at Palm Beach International Raceway on Friday, Glidden rocketed to a 3.961 at 183.59 miles per hour, topping his previous best of 3.97 that came last October at Texas Motorplex.

Glidden continues to be careful with his Hemi engine, but the minor changes and tweaks he has made continue to work in fine fashion.

He still hasn’t had to change the engine in 2011, which was the hope when he started the year, and strong runs like Friday’s career-best have followed.

“We’re doing better,” Glidden said. “That run was the next step, so that was really good. We’re still making a lot of changes with the car and the engine combinations.

“We went home from Houston with the same engine, so we wanted to go out and run it, and then see how it looked.”

The run put Glidden, who was a runner-up at the first race of the 2011 ADRL season at Royal Purple Raceway, at the No. 2 spot in Extreme 10.5 heading into the final qualifying session.

Dan Millen is in the No. 1 spot at 3.89, but Glidden is only worried about his own improvement with an engine nearly 30 years old.

He continues to show strong consistency, going 4.01 during his first run on Friday.

The battery on his Mustang shut off during the second run, but Glidden, who has an ADRL-best 11 event victories, recovered in time for a thrilling run during the night conditions at PBIR.

Glidden liked that combination in the car, but the tinkering will continue into eliminations.

“We made some ratio changes with the car and it worked,” Glidden said. “We’re going to try to ride with that, but we’ll make changes for what will be the next step.”

That next step could come in the second round of eliminations.

With a 12-car field in Extreme 10.5, Glidden will likely have a bye to open the eliminations portion of the race.

But, come second round – and Glidden hopes hopefully beyond – the set-up on the Mustang could be different.

Slightly quicker times could follow in the car, but Glidden will also remain careful not to hurt an engine that has become so reliable in 2011.

“This Hemi is a different animal. We’re trying to be cautious and not kill it,” Glidden said.

(Photos by ADRL/Richards)