A 5.799-second elapsed time, when coupled with a meager 204.66-mph trap speed, indicates one thing—serious potential—and it wasn’t only Camp, John and the rest of the Stanley & Weiss crew who recognized it.
“After Dillard won the Thursday-night shootout deal, laid down that 5.706 at like 260, we went over to congratulate him,” says Camp. “That’s huge; that’s a world record. So, I shook the man’s hand and said my piece; he looked back at me and said, ‘I saw that 5.79, I know what’s coming.’
“I’ll tell you the truth, we felt pretty good about it, too. We weren’t even close to leaning on it; the plugs looked like we’d just taken them out of the box. I knew we had an opportunity to go fast, to really do something. At that point, it was on like Donkey Kong.”
Friday morning when Outlaw Pro Mod was called to the lanes, the throng of racers, crewmen and doorslammers flocking toward staging could have been considered a race in itself. The opportunity to permanently and forever leave one’s mark on the annals of drag racing history in the form of four glowing LED numbers on a scoreboard was so blatant it seemed a foregone conclusion to almost everyone on the property. “It felt like the clock was ticking,” says John. “We tried to get up there and be first to run—we wanted to—but we didn’t make it. We had to sit back there, wait, and watch. We sure as hell weren’t the only ones trying to do it.”
Two by two they went. All the heavy hitters—Dillard, Maggio, Coughlin, amongst others—and the opportunity to “do it first” remained. Then, a little after 10 o’clock in the morning, John Stanley grabbed the brake lever and came to a stop on the much faster of Las Vegas’ two famous strips after laying a fresh patch of Mickey Thompson rubber down on the concrete launch pad. He knew he had the attention of the fans in the grandstands, along with that of his fellow racers who had gathered round the starting line for what promised to be an epic round of qualifying—but little did he realize the collective eyes of the entire drag racing community were also bearing down on him.
Five-point-six-four seconds later it was done. John Stanley, along with his famed father, Camp, and their devoted crew, had made history, clocking the first-ever 5.6-second elapsed time in a doorslammer and earning their precious “Appalachia on Steroids” Camaro bragging rights to the title of World’s Quickest Pro Mod.
“I was making the turn, rolling onto the return road, and I see Eric (Dillard), he’s picking up his ‘chutes, then just drops them and throws his arms up,” recalls John, as if reciting a scene from his favorite movie. “I had heard Scotty say something over the radio that I thought was 5.60-something, but I couldn’t tell—he was excited. But Dillard comes running over, jumps in the car, gives me a big hug and says, ‘I’m sure I heard ‘em say it was a sixty, and it sure looked like a sixty.’”
It was a “sixty”—not only the Stanley’s first, but the first one of all time. But it wouldn’t be—and according to Camp, couldn’t be—their last. “Look, even we were surprised,” he admits. “I knew it was there, but I didn’t expect it to come right off the bat in the first round of qualifying. We’re all Internet guys, so after the run John was on Facebook—I don’t Facebook—and I’m on the message boards, we’re reading posts and there’s all this bullshit. Was it legit? Is that true? And I thought to myself, we need to make sure that we do this again—there needs to be no doubt about it.”
This story was originally published on April 26, 2014. 
