The technology of drag racing is constantly evolving and moving forward with new breakthroughs in power adders, traction control, and engine development. General Motors’ LSX engine platform is one of those game changers that has made going fast on the street affordable, and has now begun to show up in more bracket racing-style cars like Ryan Gledhill’s LS6-powered dragster.

Gledhill, who works for one of the most well-known LSX aftermarket companies in the industry, Lingenfelter Performance Engineering, has taken his GM-powered dragster to new performance heights.

“We finished the build in June and made our first track appearance at our local track, Muncie Dragway on July third,” said Gledhill about just how green the car is.

The dragster uses just a stock bottom end LS6 as the base, and Gledhill and the LPE crew added a set of their worked-over GM stock 243 casting heads, upgraded the valve train, added a modest cam, and a Magnuson TVS2300 supercharger, with Brent at LPE putting the tune up in the car.

This combination, along with a small shot of nitrous from the Nitrous Outlet plate kit on the car, pushed the dragster to an impressive 7.86 elapsed time at the Holley LS Fest in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The previous best without nitrous was a 7.96 at 169 mph at the NMCA World Finals in Norwalk, where Gledhill was making exhibition runs during the LSX Shootout.

Gledhill says, “right now our main goal with the car is to see how quick we can get it to go on the stock bottom end. Moving forward, we’re hoping that more dragsters are built with the LS platform so that a class is made in the Chevrolet Performance Challenge Series events.”

With these types of impressive numbers coming from a fairly affordable LSX base, who knows how far this technology will take bracket racing.