Gray Area—Tim Flanders’ Fox Mustang is flying in NMRA SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race
Written by Ainsley Jacobs
Photography by the FSC staff
Decorated United States Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell famously said “War’s not black and white; it's gray. If you don't fight in the gray area, you’re going to lose.” For Tim Flanders, he’s turned the same strategy into success on the drag strip with his 1986 Ford Mustang GT, which he has appropriately named “Gray Area.”
Although he grew up watching his father, Ron Flanders, work in the garage, Tim didn’t pick up the bug for drag racing until he was in his late teens when he went to the track with some friends. After graduating high school, he attended a paint and body program at a local university, and a friend there had a Fox Mustang. “He and I painted the car when we were at school,” recalled Tim, the now 45-year-old owner of MAF Racing & Performance Tool. “He decided to sell it about a year, so I bought it in 2000.”
Tim started racing his new-to-him Mustang not long after in 2001. At the time, the car had a 302-cubic-inch engine topped with Trick Flow cylinder heads, an upgraded camshaft, and a C4 three-speed automatic transmission. “I was having fun doing a lot of test-n-tune stuff, thinking I was going fast,” he laughed. “I did a few NMRA events here and there in the early 2000s, too.”
In 2004, Tim upgraded his engine to a 408-cubic-inch Ford powerplant but retained his Trick Flow cylinder heads. His first time out with the new combination produced a 10.38-second time slip – quicker than he expected, especially with the car in a naturally aspirated configuration. He eventually progressed down into the 10.20-second zone, on pump gas, and stayed busy learning as much as he could.
“Charlie Booze was the one that really got me going and I learned so much from him back during the Hot Street hay days,” Tim shared. Attending any event within a five-hour drive from his home in Michigan, Tim was at the track as often as possible. Often he was in the multi-time NMRA champion’s pit area helping Booze out.
Tim’s Mustang went “to the dark side” in 2008, as he admits to briefly straying from his Blue Oval loyalty. “I put an LS3-headed, LS-based hydraulic-roller combination in there and went 9.20s with it with the C4,” he confessed.
The brand cross-pollination didn’t see much light of day, though, as Tim took a few years’ hiatus from racing in the late 2000s when his two daughters, Mallory and Audrey, were small and the economy was in a slump. By 2013, however, he was ready to get back at it and did so in a big way when he won the Super Street Big-Block – Naturally Aspirated category at Hot Rod Drag Week with an impressive average of 9.607 seconds.
“I raced the car for a year after that, but it had gotten to the point where if I wanted to go quicker, it’d be 10 grand,” lamented the racer. “We had just gotten a new house, I needed a new shop, and I sold everything off the car except the wheels and brakes.”
Unsurprisingly, his downtime didn’t last long… in mid-2015, Tim began building his 1986 Mustang GT back up. He started by stripping the car down to a bare metal shell, added an HO Fibertrends 2.5-inch cowl-induction hood, then took it to Southern Michigan Auto Body to be sprayed in Ford’s Avalanche Gray by Greg and Terry; ironically, although Tim had gone to school for paint and body, he worked in the insurance industry and doing aviation refurbishment throughout most of his adult life, but finally took a job at Southern Michigan Auto Body after he became a customer there.
Tim took care to cut and rework the 8.50-certified roll cage that had come with his Fox body. He had upgraded it several times over the years, making revisions, moving weight, and adding bracing where he wanted it. Fortunately, his work building parachute mounts, tubular bumpers, core supports, and more for 1979-2004 Mustangs at his MAF Racing shop meant Tim’s welding skills were definitely on point.
He upgraded the suspension with high-end components including Strange Engineering double-adjustable front struts, Racecraft Inc. front control arms, stock location Afco double-adjustable rear shocks from TRZ Motorsports, stock-location springs, and an adjustable 9-inch rearend with a Strange center section. “Literally everything on the car was replaced. The only thing left over from the old build was the Bogart wheels I bought back in 2004,” stated Tim.
Knowing he would be keeping his prized car in street-legal form for use at drag-and-drive events and True Street-type competitions, Tim chose a single E85-focused fuel system rather than two separate setups. Fore Innovations components along with a modified 2003 Mustang Cobra fuel tank, and 1,650cc, high-impedance fuel injectors get the job done without complications.
Inside, Tim outfitted the Mustang’s old-school cool interior with the bare minimum to survive the stretches of street between drag strip destinations. A Race Tech containment seat and Pro 1 Racing harness keep the driver safe, while an air conditioning system from Vintage Air keeps him cool.
Finally, he purchased a beat-up Gen 1 Coyote engine for $900 on Craigslist and fabricated a custom turbo kit to utilize a single BorgWarner S480 turbo. With the boosted powerplant and a Ford 6R80 six-speed automatic transmission, Tim struggled for about a year before he “threw in the towel” and found success by adding a three-speed Turbo 400 transmission from John Capizzi at Capizzi Automotive, a Circle D Specialties torque converter spec’d by Pete Nichols and a Gear Vendors overdrive unit.
“When I had the little Ford motors in it back in the 2000s, everyone thought I had nitrous on it because it was so fast,” laughed Tim, constantly being told he was doing things in a gray area. “When I rebuilt it, I did a bunch of things the way I wanted, even though people told me it wouldn’t work — but it did.” Coupled with the car’s color, Tim christened it “Gray Area” in honor of those who second-guessed his unorthodox methods of going fast.
One short season later, Tim was ready to upgrade again. “I bought a rod and piston Gen 1, put that in, and ran mid-nines pretty quickly,” he noted. His first foray into the world of power adders, Tim had been cautious when calculating his tune-ups until he had a better handle on the Holley Dominator EFI system which he wired with his own hands. “Other than the transmission and engines, I do everything myself — but those guys are good at what they do and well worth the money.”
Inspired by the proximity of the event and his desire to get out and do something after the pandemic downtime, Tim headed to Michigan’s US 131 Motorsports Park for the NMRA/NMCA All-American Nationals which was held in August 2020.
“It was my first time back with the NMRA after a long time away, but I couldn’t not go!” he proclaimed. Running a combination of water and methanol for charge cooling, the non-intercooled, turbocharged Coyote stepped up to a BorgWarner S491 snail, which was quite capable. However, an unfortunate issue with the cord for Tim’s two-step rev-limiter cost him the overall win in NMRA True Street when he unintentionally rolled the beams.
In 2021, Tim had Fonzie Novelo of Novelo Racing Engines fame build a new, sleeved Coyote engine for his four-eye Fox Mustang. Pairing a Gen 3 block with ported Gen 2 heads and a Gen 1 timing system, Novello loaded it with CP MPR-spec pistons, Molnar Power Adder Plus connecting rods, and a stock Ford Performance Coyote crankshaft.
Tim found redemption that season, as he returned to his home track in July to compete at the NMRA/NMCA Power Festival for a do-over of the previous year’s debacle. There, his quick 8.994-second average across three runs of True Street competition earned him the win outright.
Making the accomplishment even more impressive, Tim doubled up with a second True Street overall win at the NMCA World Street Finals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park in late September with an even quicker average of 8.535 seconds. “I went on a whim because I had to pick up some tubing nearby for my business, but I figured while I was there, I might as well race!” he added.
Another spur-of-the-moment decision, and encouragement from his old friend Charlie Booze, prompted Tim to switch out of True Street and into the newly created NMRA Suncoast Performance 8.60 Street Race category for 2022. “I saw some random post on Facebook and I knew I could do it, and it would give me the chance to win some more money,” he said.
Tim drove to Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio, on Saturday morning of the NMRA Ford Performance Nationals in mid-June. “I double-entered into 8.60 Street Race and True Street because I needed test passes,” shared Tim. Incredibly, when Sunday’s eliminations rolled around, Tim found himself in the finals. “It was a close one, only a fender at the big end, but I won and it felt great.”
Competitive in the quarter-mile class, Tim sat out the first two races of the 2023 season but was more than ready to get back at it for the NMRA/NMCA Super Bowl of Muscle Car Drag Racing in St. Louis, Missouri, in early May.
There, he qualified ninth in NMRA Suncoast Performance 8.60 Street Race with an 8.674 at 158.67 mph trip. “I had struggled all weekend with the tune-up; there was some stuff going on that I couldn’t figure out,” Tim noted, whose weekend ended in the semi-finals. “So, I was pretty happy with how it worked out overall.”
Tim attended the 2023 Sick Summer drag-and-drive in June and added another accolade to his portfolio when he accumulated an average of 8.523 (including a rare, perfect 8.500-second elapsed time) to win the Sick Street Race category.
The end of the grueling racing road trip wasn’t the end for Tim and his Gray Area Mustang, however. “I left the last track at 9:30 pm, drove 5.5 hours home, slept for 1.5 hours, picked up my wife, Kristin in Detroit from the Taylor Swift concert, and then we drove to Norwalk,” the diehard racer recollected.
Back at Summit Motorsports Park for the NMRA Ford Homecoming, Tim was barely functioning due to his sleep deprivation but he still put in a valiant fight with his SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race effort. From qualifying on an 8.704 at 161.98 mph effort to advance through the first round, he ran just a touch too quick in the second round and broke out with his 8.486 at 151.95 mph pass.
When the NMRA returned to Michigan for the NMRA/NMCA Power Festival, Tim was well-rested and determined. “Nobody was coming to my racetrack and winning except for me!” proclaimed the man. In qualifying, Tim was surprisingly low on the list as his 8.885 at 156.63 mph run put him in eleventh of the seventeen entries, but he tweaked the tune-up in time for eliminations.
Going 8.666 at 145.91 mph in round one, Tim dispatched Terry “Beefcake” Reeves in the opposing lane. He did the same to his opponents in rounds two and three, then staged against Paul Sienkiewicz in the finals for an all-Michigan battle. Although Sienkiewicz had the quicker reaction time and the advantage at the starting line, Tim powered past and his 8.614 at 154.53 mph time slip confirmed his plan to win had officially come to fruition.
Still high from winning a coveted Victor award, Tim finished his 2023 Holley NMRA Ford Nationals drag racing season at the NMRA World Finals Featuring the Holley Intergalactic Ford Festival at Kentucky’s Beech Bend Raceway Park in late September.
“I had my daughter’s homecoming on Friday night, so my dad, who comes with me to some of the races and helps out a ton, and I drove all night and slept on a cot at the gate to be there on Saturday morning,” detailed the dedicated father. Although he hoped for another Winner’s Circle photo session, Tim was dismayed when his Mustang just wouldn’t cooperate. “I realized I had hurt the converter when I went testing the week before, and even though I had plenty of power in the car, I couldn’t get it to go anywhere and was lying over when I let go of the button.”
Going out in round one of eliminations was a tough pill for Tim to swallow, but his other successes coupled with the fact he had finished seventh overall in SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race season points meant there was still plenty worth celebrating.
Determined to improve and with the hope of clinching a championship title in his class, Tim committed to running five of the six NMRA events for 2024. To prepare for a more focused effort, he made a few minor off-season changes. “I cleaned up some odds and ends, adjusted the boost-control strategies and sensor locations and sensors themselves, moved the radiator a little, and took out the Gear Vendors since I’m not driving on the street like I usually do,” he outlined.
Having to skip the season opener in Florida once again due to schedule and logistic constraints, Flanders began his season at North Carolina’s Rockingham Dragway in April at the NMRA/NMCA All-Star Nationals. There, he qualified eighth in the competitive SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race field of 19 cars. His off-season work yielded improved consistency, and Flanders translated the effort into two elimination-round wins before his Fox body sadly pushed through the beams in round three.
Looking ahead, Tim’s strategy is simply to test as much as possible, gather as much data as possible, and improve his muscle memory as much as possible as he manually shifts each gear change of his Turbo 400. “I test at US 131 several times a month and they treat us well. I think it’s one of the best tracks in the country and Sam Peterson does a fantastic job with the track prep,” affirmed Tim, having gone as quick as 7.90 in the quarter mile on Peterson’s surface.
Knowing his car inside and out, and cycling worn parts out with new replacements, has been a big key to Tim’s street-legal success over the years. His Gray Area 1986 Mustang GT served him well for more than two decades now, showing its prowess across multiple categories from prestigious drag-and-drive events to various NMRA categories. When Tim shows up to race, he’s definitely well-armed and ready to go to war.
The Details
Owner/Driver
Owner: Tim Flanders
Driver: Tim Flanders
Hometown: Battle Creek, Michigan
Occupation: Body Shop Estimator
Class: SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race
Crew: Ron, Kristin, Mallory, and Audrey Flanders
Car Year/Make/Model: 1986 Ford Mustang GT
Powertrain
Engine: Coyote
Engine builder: Fonzie Novelo
Displacement: 302 cubic inches
Block: Sleeved Gen 3
Bore: 3.63 inches
Stroke: 3.65 inches
Crank: Stock
Rods: Moliner Power Adder Plus
Pistons: CP MPR spec
Heads: Ported Gen 2
Valvetrain: PAC Springs and MPR lockouts
Cam type: Stock
Carburetor or EFI system: Holley Dominator
Power-adder: Forced Inductions s491
Fuel brand and type: Pump e85
Headers and exhaust: 1.75 Stainless MAF Racing 3” Alum HARM mufflers
Transmission: Turbo 400
Transmission Builder: Jon Capizzi
Clutch/shifter/torque converter: Circle D bolt-together
Rearend: 90/40 spline strange and Pro HD center
Chassis
Body and/or chassis builder: MAF Racing 8.50
Suspension (Front): Racecraft Control arms Strange DA struts
Suspension (Rear): Racecraft with TRZ DA Afco stock location
Brakes (Front): Wilwood
Brakes (Rear): Wilwood
Wheels (front): Bogart Welded RT 4-inch
Wheels (Rear): Bogart Welded RT Beadlock 8-inch
Tires (Front): Mickey Thompson ET Street front
Tires (Rear): Mickey Thompson Pro 275
Aftermarket body modifications: HO Fibertrends 2.5-inch, bolt-on hood
Safety equipment: Racetech seat and Pro 1 belts
Vehicle weight: 3,340 pounds
Quickest ET: 7.90 seconds
Best 60-foot: 1.17 seconds
Fastest mph: 173
Sponsors: MAF Racing, Novelo Racing Engines, Capizzi Automotive
Written by Ainsley Jacobs
Photography by the FSC staff
Decorated United States Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell famously said “War’s not black and white; it's gray. If you don't fight in the gray area, you’re going to lose.” For Tim Flanders, he’s turned the same strategy into success on the drag strip with his 1986 Ford Mustang GT, which he has appropriately named “Gray Area.”
Although he grew up watching his father, Ron Flanders, work in the garage, Tim didn’t pick up the bug for drag racing until he was in his late teens when he went to the track with some friends. After graduating high school, he attended a paint and body program at a local university, and a friend there had a Fox Mustang. “He and I painted the car when we were at school,” recalled Tim, the now 45-year-old owner of MAF Racing & Performance Tool. “He decided to sell it about a year, so I bought it in 2000.”
Tim started racing his new-to-him Mustang not long after in 2001. At the time, the car had a 302-cubic-inch engine topped with Trick Flow cylinder heads, an upgraded camshaft, and a C4 three-speed automatic transmission. “I was having fun doing a lot of test-n-tune stuff, thinking I was going fast,” he laughed. “I did a few NMRA events here and there in the early 2000s, too.”
In 2004, Tim upgraded his engine to a 408-cubic-inch Ford powerplant but retained his Trick Flow cylinder heads. His first time out with the new combination produced a 10.38-second time slip – quicker than he expected, especially with the car in a naturally aspirated configuration. He eventually progressed down into the 10.20-second zone, on pump gas, and stayed busy learning as much as he could.
“Charlie Booze was the one that really got me going and I learned so much from him back during the Hot Street hay days,” Tim shared. Attending any event within a five-hour drive from his home in Michigan, Tim was at the track as often as possible. Often he was in the multi-time NMRA champion’s pit area helping Booze out.
Tim’s Mustang went “to the dark side” in 2008, as he admits to briefly straying from his Blue Oval loyalty. “I put an LS3-headed, LS-based hydraulic-roller combination in there and went 9.20s with it with the C4,” he confessed.
The brand cross-pollination didn’t see much light of day, though, as Tim took a few years’ hiatus from racing in the late 2000s when his two daughters, Mallory and Audrey, were small and the economy was in a slump. By 2013, however, he was ready to get back at it and did so in a big way when he won the Super Street Big-Block – Naturally Aspirated category at Hot Rod Drag Week with an impressive average of 9.607 seconds.
“I raced the car for a year after that, but it had gotten to the point where if I wanted to go quicker, it’d be 10 grand,” lamented the racer. “We had just gotten a new house, I needed a new shop, and I sold everything off the car except the wheels and brakes.”
Unsurprisingly, his downtime didn’t last long… in mid-2015, Tim began building his 1986 Mustang GT back up. He started by stripping the car down to a bare metal shell, added an HO Fibertrends 2.5-inch cowl-induction hood, then took it to Southern Michigan Auto Body to be sprayed in Ford’s Avalanche Gray by Greg and Terry; ironically, although Tim had gone to school for paint and body, he worked in the insurance industry and doing aviation refurbishment throughout most of his adult life, but finally took a job at Southern Michigan Auto Body after he became a customer there.
Tim took care to cut and rework the 8.50-certified roll cage that had come with his Fox body. He had upgraded it several times over the years, making revisions, moving weight, and adding bracing where he wanted it. Fortunately, his work building parachute mounts, tubular bumpers, core supports, and more for 1979-2004 Mustangs at his MAF Racing shop meant Tim’s welding skills were definitely on point.
He upgraded the suspension with high-end components including Strange Engineering double-adjustable front struts, Racecraft Inc. front control arms, stock location Afco double-adjustable rear shocks from TRZ Motorsports, stock-location springs, and an adjustable 9-inch rearend with a Strange center section. “Literally everything on the car was replaced. The only thing left over from the old build was the Bogart wheels I bought back in 2004,” stated Tim.
Knowing he would be keeping his prized car in street-legal form for use at drag-and-drive events and True Street-type competitions, Tim chose a single E85-focused fuel system rather than two separate setups. Fore Innovations components along with a modified 2003 Mustang Cobra fuel tank, and 1,650cc, high-impedance fuel injectors get the job done without complications.
Inside, Tim outfitted the Mustang’s old-school cool interior with the bare minimum to survive the stretches of street between drag strip destinations. A Race Tech containment seat and Pro 1 Racing harness keep the driver safe, while an air conditioning system from Vintage Air keeps him cool.
Finally, he purchased a beat-up Gen 1 Coyote engine for $900 on Craigslist and fabricated a custom turbo kit to utilize a single BorgWarner S480 turbo. With the boosted powerplant and a Ford 6R80 six-speed automatic transmission, Tim struggled for about a year before he “threw in the towel” and found success by adding a three-speed Turbo 400 transmission from John Capizzi at Capizzi Automotive, a Circle D Specialties torque converter spec’d by Pete Nichols and a Gear Vendors overdrive unit.
“When I had the little Ford motors in it back in the 2000s, everyone thought I had nitrous on it because it was so fast,” laughed Tim, constantly being told he was doing things in a gray area. “When I rebuilt it, I did a bunch of things the way I wanted, even though people told me it wouldn’t work — but it did.” Coupled with the car’s color, Tim christened it “Gray Area” in honor of those who second-guessed his unorthodox methods of going fast.
One short season later, Tim was ready to upgrade again. “I bought a rod and piston Gen 1, put that in, and ran mid-nines pretty quickly,” he noted. His first foray into the world of power adders, Tim had been cautious when calculating his tune-ups until he had a better handle on the Holley Dominator EFI system which he wired with his own hands. “Other than the transmission and engines, I do everything myself — but those guys are good at what they do and well worth the money.”
Inspired by the proximity of the event and his desire to get out and do something after the pandemic downtime, Tim headed to Michigan’s US 131 Motorsports Park for the NMRA/NMCA All-American Nationals which was held in August 2020.
“It was my first time back with the NMRA after a long time away, but I couldn’t not go!” he proclaimed. Running a combination of water and methanol for charge cooling, the non-intercooled, turbocharged Coyote stepped up to a BorgWarner S491 snail, which was quite capable. However, an unfortunate issue with the cord for Tim’s two-step rev-limiter cost him the overall win in NMRA True Street when he unintentionally rolled the beams.
In 2021, Tim had Fonzie Novelo of Novelo Racing Engines fame build a new, sleeved Coyote engine for his four-eye Fox Mustang. Pairing a Gen 3 block with ported Gen 2 heads and a Gen 1 timing system, Novello loaded it with CP MPR-spec pistons, Molnar Power Adder Plus connecting rods, and a stock Ford Performance Coyote crankshaft.
Tim found redemption that season, as he returned to his home track in July to compete at the NMRA/NMCA Power Festival for a do-over of the previous year’s debacle. There, his quick 8.994-second average across three runs of True Street competition earned him the win outright.
Making the accomplishment even more impressive, Tim doubled up with a second True Street overall win at the NMCA World Street Finals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park in late September with an even quicker average of 8.535 seconds. “I went on a whim because I had to pick up some tubing nearby for my business, but I figured while I was there, I might as well race!” he added.
Another spur-of-the-moment decision, and encouragement from his old friend Charlie Booze, prompted Tim to switch out of True Street and into the newly created NMRA Suncoast Performance 8.60 Street Race category for 2022. “I saw some random post on Facebook and I knew I could do it, and it would give me the chance to win some more money,” he said.
Tim drove to Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio, on Saturday morning of the NMRA Ford Performance Nationals in mid-June. “I double-entered into 8.60 Street Race and True Street because I needed test passes,” shared Tim. Incredibly, when Sunday’s eliminations rolled around, Tim found himself in the finals. “It was a close one, only a fender at the big end, but I won and it felt great.”
Competitive in the quarter-mile class, Tim sat out the first two races of the 2023 season but was more than ready to get back at it for the NMRA/NMCA Super Bowl of Muscle Car Drag Racing in St. Louis, Missouri, in early May.
There, he qualified ninth in NMRA Suncoast Performance 8.60 Street Race with an 8.674 at 158.67 mph trip. “I had struggled all weekend with the tune-up; there was some stuff going on that I couldn’t figure out,” Tim noted, whose weekend ended in the semi-finals. “So, I was pretty happy with how it worked out overall.”
Tim attended the 2023 Sick Summer drag-and-drive in June and added another accolade to his portfolio when he accumulated an average of 8.523 (including a rare, perfect 8.500-second elapsed time) to win the Sick Street Race category.
The end of the grueling racing road trip wasn’t the end for Tim and his Gray Area Mustang, however. “I left the last track at 9:30 pm, drove 5.5 hours home, slept for 1.5 hours, picked up my wife, Kristin in Detroit from the Taylor Swift concert, and then we drove to Norwalk,” the diehard racer recollected.
Back at Summit Motorsports Park for the NMRA Ford Homecoming, Tim was barely functioning due to his sleep deprivation but he still put in a valiant fight with his SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race effort. From qualifying on an 8.704 at 161.98 mph effort to advance through the first round, he ran just a touch too quick in the second round and broke out with his 8.486 at 151.95 mph pass.
When the NMRA returned to Michigan for the NMRA/NMCA Power Festival, Tim was well-rested and determined. “Nobody was coming to my racetrack and winning except for me!” proclaimed the man. In qualifying, Tim was surprisingly low on the list as his 8.885 at 156.63 mph run put him in eleventh of the seventeen entries, but he tweaked the tune-up in time for eliminations.
Going 8.666 at 145.91 mph in round one, Tim dispatched Terry “Beefcake” Reeves in the opposing lane. He did the same to his opponents in rounds two and three, then staged against Paul Sienkiewicz in the finals for an all-Michigan battle. Although Sienkiewicz had the quicker reaction time and the advantage at the starting line, Tim powered past and his 8.614 at 154.53 mph time slip confirmed his plan to win had officially come to fruition.
Still high from winning a coveted Victor award, Tim finished his 2023 Holley NMRA Ford Nationals drag racing season at the NMRA World Finals Featuring the Holley Intergalactic Ford Festival at Kentucky’s Beech Bend Raceway Park in late September.
“I had my daughter’s homecoming on Friday night, so my dad, who comes with me to some of the races and helps out a ton, and I drove all night and slept on a cot at the gate to be there on Saturday morning,” detailed the dedicated father. Although he hoped for another Winner’s Circle photo session, Tim was dismayed when his Mustang just wouldn’t cooperate. “I realized I had hurt the converter when I went testing the week before, and even though I had plenty of power in the car, I couldn’t get it to go anywhere and was lying over when I let go of the button.”
Going out in round one of eliminations was a tough pill for Tim to swallow, but his other successes coupled with the fact he had finished seventh overall in SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race season points meant there was still plenty worth celebrating.
Determined to improve and with the hope of clinching a championship title in his class, Tim committed to running five of the six NMRA events for 2024. To prepare for a more focused effort, he made a few minor off-season changes. “I cleaned up some odds and ends, adjusted the boost-control strategies and sensor locations and sensors themselves, moved the radiator a little, and took out the Gear Vendors since I’m not driving on the street like I usually do,” he outlined.
Having to skip the season opener in Florida once again due to schedule and logistic constraints, Flanders began his season at North Carolina’s Rockingham Dragway in April at the NMRA/NMCA All-Star Nationals. There, he qualified eighth in the competitive SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race field of 19 cars. His off-season work yielded improved consistency, and Flanders translated the effort into two elimination-round wins before his Fox body sadly pushed through the beams in round three.
Looking ahead, Tim’s strategy is simply to test as much as possible, gather as much data as possible, and improve his muscle memory as much as possible as he manually shifts each gear change of his Turbo 400. “I test at US 131 several times a month and they treat us well. I think it’s one of the best tracks in the country and Sam Peterson does a fantastic job with the track prep,” affirmed Tim, having gone as quick as 7.90 in the quarter mile on Peterson’s surface.
Knowing his car inside and out, and cycling worn parts out with new replacements, has been a big key to Tim’s street-legal success over the years. His Gray Area 1986 Mustang GT served him well for more than two decades now, showing its prowess across multiple categories from prestigious drag-and-drive events to various NMRA categories. When Tim shows up to race, he’s definitely well-armed and ready to go to war.
The Details
Owner/Driver
Owner: Tim Flanders
Driver: Tim Flanders
Hometown: Battle Creek, Michigan
Occupation: Body Shop Estimator
Class: SunCoast Performance 8.60 Street Race
Crew: Ron, Kristin, Mallory, and Audrey Flanders
Car Year/Make/Model: 1986 Ford Mustang GT
Powertrain
Engine: Coyote
Engine builder: Fonzie Novelo
Displacement: 302 cubic inches
Block: Sleeved Gen 3
Bore: 3.63 inches
Stroke: 3.65 inches
Crank: Stock
Rods: Moliner Power Adder Plus
Pistons: CP MPR spec
Heads: Ported Gen 2
Valvetrain: PAC Springs and MPR lockouts
Cam type: Stock
Carburetor or EFI system: Holley Dominator
Power-adder: Forced Inductions s491
Fuel brand and type: Pump e85
Headers and exhaust: 1.75 Stainless MAF Racing 3” Alum HARM mufflers
Transmission: Turbo 400
Transmission Builder: Jon Capizzi
Clutch/shifter/torque converter: Circle D bolt-together
Rearend: 90/40 spline strange and Pro HD center
Chassis
Body and/or chassis builder: MAF Racing 8.50
Suspension (Front): Racecraft Control arms Strange DA struts
Suspension (Rear): Racecraft with TRZ DA Afco stock location
Brakes (Front): Wilwood
Brakes (Rear): Wilwood
Wheels (front): Bogart Welded RT 4-inch
Wheels (Rear): Bogart Welded RT Beadlock 8-inch
Tires (Front): Mickey Thompson ET Street front
Tires (Rear): Mickey Thompson Pro 275
Aftermarket body modifications: HO Fibertrends 2.5-inch, bolt-on hood
Safety equipment: Racetech seat and Pro 1 belts
Vehicle weight: 3,340 pounds
Quickest ET: 7.90 seconds
Best 60-foot: 1.17 seconds
Fastest mph: 173
Sponsors: MAF Racing, Novelo Racing Engines, Capizzi Automotive
