Geoff Turk Reveals New NHRA Factory X Dodge Challenger

On March 8, 2018, veteran sportsman drag racer, Geoff Turk, made history by recording the first 7-second quarter-mile elapsed time ever by a factory-built Stock Eliminator car. he did so in his now-famed Blackbird Dodge Challenger Drag Pak. Turk has accomplished much since then, in racing, business, and in life. But the personal drive to go quicker and faster, and to again be a pioneer and innovator, has taken his racing efforts in a new direction. 

Now, his sights are set on trailblazing the NHRA’s all-new Factory Experimental (FX) category. This week, he’s checking off the first milestone by unveiling the very first FX car to the public, at the Performance Racing Industry show in Indianapolis. 

Earlier this year, Turk commissioned Darren Breaud and his team at B&B Race Cars, a noted small-tire and Stock/Super Stock chassis builder, to construct a 2021 Dodge Challenger specifically for the NHRA FX category. After working virtually around the clock at the Hohenwald, Tennessee facility, the new machine is nearing the finish line — attaining a complete enough form to show it off to the world ahead of its debut next spring.

“I’ve always enjoyed trying to do something that others haven’t yet done,” Turk says of the endeavor. “It certainly inspired me with the first go-around in heads-up racing in the factory shootout, because at the time that I entered that, the supercharged cars had been running for two years, and there were COPOs and Cobra Jets, but there weren’t any Challengers. There was a lot of appeal to be one of the first guys to take a Challenger and try to make it competitive in the Factory Stock Showdown, since no one else had figured it out. I wanted to prove that something that was not easy could be done, and be the first one to do it, versus copying someone else’s recipe and doing it. In my mind, there’s refinement, which is taking someone else’s innovation and optimizing it, but innovation comes when you do something no one else has been able to do. That’s real innovation. To be the guy, or the team, that figured it out, that put it together and made it happen, it’s just a much higher bar and delivers much greater satisfaction. And that’s been my whole career…to rattle the status quo, be a game changer.”

Turk, was for a time, eyeing a jump into Pro Modified ranks, but then turned his attention to the popular Ultra Street eliminator. But it was around that same point in time the…