Corvette Contender—Jim Widener and Tony Bischoff’s flamed C7 blazes a path in VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod
Written by Ainsley Jacobs
Photography by the FSC staff and courtesy of Jim Widener
Jim Widener dreamt of driving a big-tire, high-horsepower doorslammer ever since he was a little boy. As an adult, the successful entrepreneur was fortunate to enjoy the thrill of blasting down the drag strip for decades. His latest acquisition, a 2017 Chevrolet Corvette, propelled him to the pinnacle of the Pro Modified ranks.
Growing up, Widener was always tearing things apart in his parents’ garage to figure out how they worked. “In high school, there were guys with fast, loud cars, and I really wanted one of them!” recalled Widener, now 52. He took an apprentice job at a local gas station and began getting his hands dirty turning wrenches on cars. “I bought a ’71 Cutlass and put together an Oldsmobile engine built by Tony Bischoff at BES Racing Engines and we became friends.”
Widener, still in high school at the time, would run at his local track every weekend, he knew he needed to be quicker… so, he bought a nitrous kit. “I thought it would be cool. I installed it myself, went to the track, and the track owner was super proud of me because I scattered the engine across the whole track!” laughed the man.
After the incident, Widener purchased a Ford Mustang from a friend, Gary Rohe, who later founded his chassis shop Gary Rohe Race Cars. Widener built the Mustang in his home garage after he had graduated from tech school, did the roll cage himself, and raced as much as he could at various NSCA and Fastest Street Car events in EZ Street.
Always on the hunt for quicker elapsed times, Widener experienced a scary top-end wreck that put a temporary stop to his progress. “I rolled five or six times after the finish line and destroyed the car,” he noted. “A few days later, I bought a partially finished Mustang from Nick Bacalis and had Tony [Bischoff] do the engine for it.”
At first, Widener planned to run in NMCA Xtreme Street, but Bischoff convinced him to run NMCA Nostalgia Pro Street instead. That pivot proved plentiful, as Widener earned the 2008 NMCA Nostalgia Pro Street season championship title with two wins, three runners-up, and number one qualifying honors at six of the seven races for the year.
By 2010, Bischoff wrecked his Extreme 10.5 Mercury Cougar for the last time and decided to part ways with the car. Rather than write it off, Widener purchased it and the two longtime friends partnered together for a rebuild project where Widener took over driving duties and Bischoff built the horsepower. In 2012, the men reintroduced their Cougar collaboration and were pretty competitive with several strong season points finishes in a row.
“I ran into Chris Duncan at a race in 2015, and he really wanted to build a nitrous car for us,” said Widener. After several discussions, the men settled on a sleek new 2017 Chevrolet Corvette and decided to run it in NMCA Xtreme Pro Mod. “I just wanted to go faster. My original dream as a kid was to race Pro Stock, so I jumped right past that into Pro Mod.”
Once the project received the green light, Chris Duncan Race Cars pieced together the C7’s lightweight, modern chassis. “He was extremely professional throughout the entire process and kept his word on meeting timelines and promises,” Widener shared. When the car was ready to roll out on its Weld wheels, Widener brought it back to his Batesville, Indiana-based Widener Automotive general repair shop where he worked nights and weekends on the rest of the assembly.
Despite a lifetime of racing on the bottle with carbureted configurations, Widener was an eager adopter of EFI technology and has trusted Holley’s standalone engine management systems on his cars for well over a decade. For his new Corvette, he wired in a complete Holley setup, installed the Aeromotive fuel system, and fitted both the Hemi-headed, 903-cubic-inch BES Racing Engines bullet that Bischoff built with care as well as the Lenco transmission and Ty-Drive converter drive.
Originally, the men had planned to diverge from their usual route and run a twin-turbo setup on the Synergy Composites-bodied C7 Pro Mod instead. “But, neither Tony nor I had much history with turbos and we knew we wouldn’t be competitive quickly unless we hired someone to guide us through that initial phase,” shared Widener.
The men analyzed the rulebook and deliberated parity potential, but ultimately decided stuck with their tried-and-true nitrous oxide power adder. “Steve Johnson at Induction Solutions really helped us out a lot, and all of our engines have his nitrous on them,” affirmed Widener, pleased he would still be able to utilize all of the data he had gathered over the year with various combinations. “The first time I ever ran nitrous, when I hit that button and felt the extra acceleration instantly… it was like a drug!”
The rest of the Corvette is buttoned up with proven parts from the aftermarket’s finest drag-focused manufacturers. A carbon fiber Precision Shaft Technologies driveshaft terminates into a Mark Williams Enterprises center section with a Strange Engineering modular rearend. Power is transferred out through a set of Strange axles, and a matching set of Strange carbon brakes work to restrain the acceleration.
Keeping the Pro Mod sitting pretty and hooking hard, Widener and Bischoff selected Strange front struts and Santhuff rear shocks to work with the Chris Duncan-fabricated four-link.
Finally, it was time for Sticker Dude to apply the Corvette’s eye-catching blue-and-black graphic flame wrap and for Widener to christen the car with its first few laps. With Bischoff serving as the official crew chief, the honors were done at the Ohio Valley Prize Fight race in Kentucky in 2017, and while Widener only made a few test passes for the initial shakedown, the results were promising.
“The first year or two with the car, we really just focused on a lot of testing and changing things. Different gear ratios, engine combinations, and such,” explained Widener, who had a bit of a tough time figuring out what his new Pro Mod preferred. “It didn’t want anything that the Cougar did. We tried to run it like the Cougar, and that didn’t work at all, so we had to back up and listen to the car.”
It wasn’t long before the Hemi-headed engine was swapped in favor of a 903-cubic-inch, Wedge-headed, Dart-based engine, and the men made steady forward progress.
In 2019, Widener finished second overall in NMCA VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod points — only a hair behind Don Walsh Jr. “Don is a friend, but I didn’t really like him that year because that damn turbo thing would clip me right at the finish line,” joked Widener. In 2020 and 2021, he finished sixth in the standings.
It was around 2020 when Widener decided to take advantage of a lighter weight gearbox and replaced his Lenco with a three-speed reverse pattern Turbo 400 from M&M Transmission. Coupled with an M&M converter and shifter, the change has resulted in progressively quicker and faster passes for the Pro Mod. “Mark [Micke] has been great to work with. He sends us new stators to test and is always letting us know when he has something new that may work better,” Widener affirmed.
One of Widener’s most memorable achievements and proudest moments, though, came in 2021 while he was racing at the World Street Nationals at Florida’s Orlando Speed World, where he won. “I lost my voice by the time I turned the corner at the top end, I was screaming I was so happy,” professed the Pro Mod winner. “There were a lot of big-name guys there with a tricky track, and it was pretty cool to come out on top.”
When the Pro Mod rules were opened up to permit displacement as high as 959 cubic inch inches, Widener and Bischoff jumped at the chance to get on board for 2022. They stuck with the same Wedge-headed engine base that had been working well, but added a new stroker Bryant crankshaft to sling the Ross pistons atop GRP connecting rods.
Widener improved to finish fourth in his 2022 season but, for 2023, he wasn’t able to attend the first three NMCA events of the season. In the interim, Widener ran in various other Pro Mod events closer to his home in Indiana. When he showed up to US 131 Motorsports Park in Michigan in July for the NMRA/NMCA Power Festival, he was itching to get going.
Qualified sixth in the VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod field with a 3.692 at 203.99 mph pass, Widener worked his way through the elimination rounds until he found himself in the semifinals. Although he ran a solid 3.690 at 204.36 mph there, Scott Wildgust was a touch quicker with his 3.658 at 205.57 mph hit and Widener headed home.
Skipping the NMCA All-American Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio, Widener returned for the NMCA World Street Finals at historic Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park in late September. His elapsed times had slowed a touch, and although he picked up a first-round win, his weekend was cut short when his Corvette spun its tires in round two. “We had some issues and later found a nitrous wiring problem that had been plaguing us,” he lamented.
Even though he had only raced at two of the six NMCA events for 2024, Widener was still able to finish in the Top Ten for the season. “We raced at PDRA and a few other events, and made a few small changes over the course of the year,” he said. From trying different cams to changing the way the nitrous system was implemented, and even moving up to the big, 959-cubic-inch engine, the driver and crew chief found themselves up against a wall in terms of momentum.
Over the 2023-2024 off-season Bischoff and his BES Racing Engines team assembled an all-new engine on a new platform with different Dart heads and a different Dart block, specifically built to improve durability as Widener and Bischoff don’t always have time for the labor-intensive teardowns nitrous engines typically require between rounds.
“As business owners, Tony and I do all the work ourselves on nights and weekends, so we’re trying to minimize the time spent taking it apart,” added the father who also spends his time with his three children, Nick, Cortney, and Parker. “We devoted the entire winter to this development program, and it’s showing a lot of promise.”
They also outfitted the engine with its latest tricks and technology, but won’t spill the specifics on those particular details. The basics, however, include reliable standards such as a Bryant crankshaft, GRP connecting rods, Ross pistons, complete Jesel valvetrain, and a stunning billet intake manifold from Visner Engine Development.
During the off-season, Widener also received a coveted invitation to Drag Illustrated’s exclusive, $100,000-to-win 2024 World Series of Pro Mod race and was excited to be a part of the action. “To race with the best in the world was a privilege,” shared Widener.
Widener tested the revamped one-off powerplant for the first time at the race, but only made three passes before the team opted to do an engine swap. “We put what we knew well back in for the actual race,” clarified Widener. “We went 3.652 at 206.01 mph — our new personal best — in the first qualifying round and held the number-four position through the second session, too.”
Five qualifying rounds finalized the order, and Widener wound up 24th in the massive field; only the top 32 entries made the cut, and all were separated by merely 0.066-seconds. While Widener wasn’t able to get past Ken Quartuccio in the first elimination round, simply being there with his small team and being able to qualify, when so many other top-tier names didn’t, was truly an honor.
After the excitement of the WSOPM, Widener was back to business as usual and began his NMCA VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod season at the NMRA/NMCA All-Star Nationals in North Carolina.
“We put the new engine back in for the start of the NMCA season at Rockingham Dragway,” he affirmed. Unfortunately, the team had their hands full still getting things sorted out in class legal-trim, and Widener spent most of qualifying trying to surpass the sub-par performance his car was delivering. In the first round of eliminations, his 3.850 at 201.43 mph showed positive improvement, but it was too little too late and Widener was out.
Having not chased a specific series or a championship for the past several seasons, Widener and Bischoff have refocused their efforts and committed to doing exactly that with their nitrous-infused C7 2017 Chevrolet Corvette Pro Mod as they attened the remainder of the 2024 Red Line Oil NMCA Muscle Car Nationals drag racing events.
Sidebar:
The Details
Owner/Driver
Owner: Jim Widener/Tony Bischoff
Driver: Jim Widener
Hometown: Batesville, Indiana
Occupation: Owner Widener Automotive
Class: NMCA VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod
Crew: Rob Duncan, Ian Matteson
Car Year/Make/Model: 2017 Chevrolet Corvette
Powertrain
Engine: BES 959
Engine builder: BES Racing engines
Displacement: 959 cubic inches
Block: Dart
Bore: n/a
Stroke: n/a
Crank: Bryant
Rods: GRP
Pistons: Ross
Heads: Dart
Valvetrain: Jesel
Carburetor or EFI system: Holley EFI
Power-adder: NOS
Fuel brand and type: VP Racing
Headers and exhaust: DSC Fabrication
Transmission: TH400
Transmission Builder: M&M
Clutch/shifter/torque converter: M&M Shifter and Converter
Rearend: Strange Engineering
Chassis
Body and/or chassis builder: Synergy body/ Chassis built by Chris Duncan race cars (CDRC)
Suspension (Front): Strange Engineering
Suspension (Rear): Santhuff
Brakes (Front): Strange Engineering
Brakes (Rear): Strange Engineering
Wheels (front): Weld Racing
Wheels (Rear): Weld Racing
Tires (Front): Mickey Thompson
Tires (Rear): Hoosier
Aftermarket body modifications:
Safety equipment: White
Vehicle weight: 2,425 pounds
Quickest ET: 3.65 seconds (eighth-mile)
Best 60-foot: 0.927 seconds
Fastest mph: 206 (eighth-mile)
End Sidebar
Written by Ainsley Jacobs
Photography by the FSC staff and courtesy of Jim Widener
Jim Widener dreamt of driving a big-tire, high-horsepower doorslammer ever since he was a little boy. As an adult, the successful entrepreneur was fortunate to enjoy the thrill of blasting down the drag strip for decades. His latest acquisition, a 2017 Chevrolet Corvette, propelled him to the pinnacle of the Pro Modified ranks.
Growing up, Widener was always tearing things apart in his parents’ garage to figure out how they worked. “In high school, there were guys with fast, loud cars, and I really wanted one of them!” recalled Widener, now 52. He took an apprentice job at a local gas station and began getting his hands dirty turning wrenches on cars. “I bought a ’71 Cutlass and put together an Oldsmobile engine built by Tony Bischoff at BES Racing Engines and we became friends.”
Widener, still in high school at the time, would run at his local track every weekend, he knew he needed to be quicker… so, he bought a nitrous kit. “I thought it would be cool. I installed it myself, went to the track, and the track owner was super proud of me because I scattered the engine across the whole track!” laughed the man.
After the incident, Widener purchased a Ford Mustang from a friend, Gary Rohe, who later founded his chassis shop Gary Rohe Race Cars. Widener built the Mustang in his home garage after he had graduated from tech school, did the roll cage himself, and raced as much as he could at various NSCA and Fastest Street Car events in EZ Street.
Always on the hunt for quicker elapsed times, Widener experienced a scary top-end wreck that put a temporary stop to his progress. “I rolled five or six times after the finish line and destroyed the car,” he noted. “A few days later, I bought a partially finished Mustang from Nick Bacalis and had Tony [Bischoff] do the engine for it.”
At first, Widener planned to run in NMCA Xtreme Street, but Bischoff convinced him to run NMCA Nostalgia Pro Street instead. That pivot proved plentiful, as Widener earned the 2008 NMCA Nostalgia Pro Street season championship title with two wins, three runners-up, and number one qualifying honors at six of the seven races for the year.
By 2010, Bischoff wrecked his Extreme 10.5 Mercury Cougar for the last time and decided to part ways with the car. Rather than write it off, Widener purchased it and the two longtime friends partnered together for a rebuild project where Widener took over driving duties and Bischoff built the horsepower. In 2012, the men reintroduced their Cougar collaboration and were pretty competitive with several strong season points finishes in a row.
“I ran into Chris Duncan at a race in 2015, and he really wanted to build a nitrous car for us,” said Widener. After several discussions, the men settled on a sleek new 2017 Chevrolet Corvette and decided to run it in NMCA Xtreme Pro Mod. “I just wanted to go faster. My original dream as a kid was to race Pro Stock, so I jumped right past that into Pro Mod.”
Once the project received the green light, Chris Duncan Race Cars pieced together the C7’s lightweight, modern chassis. “He was extremely professional throughout the entire process and kept his word on meeting timelines and promises,” Widener shared. When the car was ready to roll out on its Weld wheels, Widener brought it back to his Batesville, Indiana-based Widener Automotive general repair shop where he worked nights and weekends on the rest of the assembly.
Despite a lifetime of racing on the bottle with carbureted configurations, Widener was an eager adopter of EFI technology and has trusted Holley’s standalone engine management systems on his cars for well over a decade. For his new Corvette, he wired in a complete Holley setup, installed the Aeromotive fuel system, and fitted both the Hemi-headed, 903-cubic-inch BES Racing Engines bullet that Bischoff built with care as well as the Lenco transmission and Ty-Drive converter drive.
Originally, the men had planned to diverge from their usual route and run a twin-turbo setup on the Synergy Composites-bodied C7 Pro Mod instead. “But, neither Tony nor I had much history with turbos and we knew we wouldn’t be competitive quickly unless we hired someone to guide us through that initial phase,” shared Widener.
The men analyzed the rulebook and deliberated parity potential, but ultimately decided stuck with their tried-and-true nitrous oxide power adder. “Steve Johnson at Induction Solutions really helped us out a lot, and all of our engines have his nitrous on them,” affirmed Widener, pleased he would still be able to utilize all of the data he had gathered over the year with various combinations. “The first time I ever ran nitrous, when I hit that button and felt the extra acceleration instantly… it was like a drug!”
The rest of the Corvette is buttoned up with proven parts from the aftermarket’s finest drag-focused manufacturers. A carbon fiber Precision Shaft Technologies driveshaft terminates into a Mark Williams Enterprises center section with a Strange Engineering modular rearend. Power is transferred out through a set of Strange axles, and a matching set of Strange carbon brakes work to restrain the acceleration.
Keeping the Pro Mod sitting pretty and hooking hard, Widener and Bischoff selected Strange front struts and Santhuff rear shocks to work with the Chris Duncan-fabricated four-link.
Finally, it was time for Sticker Dude to apply the Corvette’s eye-catching blue-and-black graphic flame wrap and for Widener to christen the car with its first few laps. With Bischoff serving as the official crew chief, the honors were done at the Ohio Valley Prize Fight race in Kentucky in 2017, and while Widener only made a few test passes for the initial shakedown, the results were promising.
“The first year or two with the car, we really just focused on a lot of testing and changing things. Different gear ratios, engine combinations, and such,” explained Widener, who had a bit of a tough time figuring out what his new Pro Mod preferred. “It didn’t want anything that the Cougar did. We tried to run it like the Cougar, and that didn’t work at all, so we had to back up and listen to the car.”
It wasn’t long before the Hemi-headed engine was swapped in favor of a 903-cubic-inch, Wedge-headed, Dart-based engine, and the men made steady forward progress.
In 2019, Widener finished second overall in NMCA VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod points — only a hair behind Don Walsh Jr. “Don is a friend, but I didn’t really like him that year because that damn turbo thing would clip me right at the finish line,” joked Widener. In 2020 and 2021, he finished sixth in the standings.
It was around 2020 when Widener decided to take advantage of a lighter weight gearbox and replaced his Lenco with a three-speed reverse pattern Turbo 400 from M&M Transmission. Coupled with an M&M converter and shifter, the change has resulted in progressively quicker and faster passes for the Pro Mod. “Mark [Micke] has been great to work with. He sends us new stators to test and is always letting us know when he has something new that may work better,” Widener affirmed.
One of Widener’s most memorable achievements and proudest moments, though, came in 2021 while he was racing at the World Street Nationals at Florida’s Orlando Speed World, where he won. “I lost my voice by the time I turned the corner at the top end, I was screaming I was so happy,” professed the Pro Mod winner. “There were a lot of big-name guys there with a tricky track, and it was pretty cool to come out on top.”
When the Pro Mod rules were opened up to permit displacement as high as 959 cubic inch inches, Widener and Bischoff jumped at the chance to get on board for 2022. They stuck with the same Wedge-headed engine base that had been working well, but added a new stroker Bryant crankshaft to sling the Ross pistons atop GRP connecting rods.
Widener improved to finish fourth in his 2022 season but, for 2023, he wasn’t able to attend the first three NMCA events of the season. In the interim, Widener ran in various other Pro Mod events closer to his home in Indiana. When he showed up to US 131 Motorsports Park in Michigan in July for the NMRA/NMCA Power Festival, he was itching to get going.
Qualified sixth in the VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod field with a 3.692 at 203.99 mph pass, Widener worked his way through the elimination rounds until he found himself in the semifinals. Although he ran a solid 3.690 at 204.36 mph there, Scott Wildgust was a touch quicker with his 3.658 at 205.57 mph hit and Widener headed home.
Skipping the NMCA All-American Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio, Widener returned for the NMCA World Street Finals at historic Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park in late September. His elapsed times had slowed a touch, and although he picked up a first-round win, his weekend was cut short when his Corvette spun its tires in round two. “We had some issues and later found a nitrous wiring problem that had been plaguing us,” he lamented.
Even though he had only raced at two of the six NMCA events for 2024, Widener was still able to finish in the Top Ten for the season. “We raced at PDRA and a few other events, and made a few small changes over the course of the year,” he said. From trying different cams to changing the way the nitrous system was implemented, and even moving up to the big, 959-cubic-inch engine, the driver and crew chief found themselves up against a wall in terms of momentum.
Over the 2023-2024 off-season Bischoff and his BES Racing Engines team assembled an all-new engine on a new platform with different Dart heads and a different Dart block, specifically built to improve durability as Widener and Bischoff don’t always have time for the labor-intensive teardowns nitrous engines typically require between rounds.
“As business owners, Tony and I do all the work ourselves on nights and weekends, so we’re trying to minimize the time spent taking it apart,” added the father who also spends his time with his three children, Nick, Cortney, and Parker. “We devoted the entire winter to this development program, and it’s showing a lot of promise.”
They also outfitted the engine with its latest tricks and technology, but won’t spill the specifics on those particular details. The basics, however, include reliable standards such as a Bryant crankshaft, GRP connecting rods, Ross pistons, complete Jesel valvetrain, and a stunning billet intake manifold from Visner Engine Development.
During the off-season, Widener also received a coveted invitation to Drag Illustrated’s exclusive, $100,000-to-win 2024 World Series of Pro Mod race and was excited to be a part of the action. “To race with the best in the world was a privilege,” shared Widener.
Widener tested the revamped one-off powerplant for the first time at the race, but only made three passes before the team opted to do an engine swap. “We put what we knew well back in for the actual race,” clarified Widener. “We went 3.652 at 206.01 mph — our new personal best — in the first qualifying round and held the number-four position through the second session, too.”
Five qualifying rounds finalized the order, and Widener wound up 24th in the massive field; only the top 32 entries made the cut, and all were separated by merely 0.066-seconds. While Widener wasn’t able to get past Ken Quartuccio in the first elimination round, simply being there with his small team and being able to qualify, when so many other top-tier names didn’t, was truly an honor.
After the excitement of the WSOPM, Widener was back to business as usual and began his NMCA VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod season at the NMRA/NMCA All-Star Nationals in North Carolina.
“We put the new engine back in for the start of the NMCA season at Rockingham Dragway,” he affirmed. Unfortunately, the team had their hands full still getting things sorted out in class legal-trim, and Widener spent most of qualifying trying to surpass the sub-par performance his car was delivering. In the first round of eliminations, his 3.850 at 201.43 mph showed positive improvement, but it was too little too late and Widener was out.
Having not chased a specific series or a championship for the past several seasons, Widener and Bischoff have refocused their efforts and committed to doing exactly that with their nitrous-infused C7 2017 Chevrolet Corvette Pro Mod as they attened the remainder of the 2024 Red Line Oil NMCA Muscle Car Nationals drag racing events.
Sidebar:
The Details
Owner/Driver
Owner: Jim Widener/Tony Bischoff
Driver: Jim Widener
Hometown: Batesville, Indiana
Occupation: Owner Widener Automotive
Class: NMCA VP Racing Lubricants Xtreme Pro Mod
Crew: Rob Duncan, Ian Matteson
Car Year/Make/Model: 2017 Chevrolet Corvette
Powertrain
Engine: BES 959
Engine builder: BES Racing engines
Displacement: 959 cubic inches
Block: Dart
Bore: n/a
Stroke: n/a
Crank: Bryant
Rods: GRP
Pistons: Ross
Heads: Dart
Valvetrain: Jesel
Carburetor or EFI system: Holley EFI
Power-adder: NOS
Fuel brand and type: VP Racing
Headers and exhaust: DSC Fabrication
Transmission: TH400
Transmission Builder: M&M
Clutch/shifter/torque converter: M&M Shifter and Converter
Rearend: Strange Engineering
Chassis
Body and/or chassis builder: Synergy body/ Chassis built by Chris Duncan race cars (CDRC)
Suspension (Front): Strange Engineering
Suspension (Rear): Santhuff
Brakes (Front): Strange Engineering
Brakes (Rear): Strange Engineering
Wheels (front): Weld Racing
Wheels (Rear): Weld Racing
Tires (Front): Mickey Thompson
Tires (Rear): Hoosier
Aftermarket body modifications:
Safety equipment: White
Vehicle weight: 2,425 pounds
Quickest ET: 3.65 seconds (eighth-mile)
Best 60-foot: 0.927 seconds
Fastest mph: 206 (eighth-mile)
End Sidebar
