Earlier this year we introduced you to this monster. This is the 2019 Dodge
Challenger SRT Hellcat RedEye wide-body. Now that's a mouthful of words and this
really is a handful of car. It's big claim to fame is that it has the
now-discontinued 2018 Challenger Demon engine in it so it makes 797 horsepower
instead of the Demon's completely mental 840 horsepower but that's still 80
horsepower more than a regular Dodge Challenger Hellcat. Now when we first
drove it it was at a circuit track just outside of Portland, Maine and we came
away a little less than impressed because let's be honest here the
Challenger is really not a good circuit track car. It's too big, it's too heavy
and when you could put it up against something like the Mustang which is much
more sharp or the Camaro which weighs less it doesn't hold its own all that
well. But I think the Dodge folks will agree that this thing really does better
on a different kind of track, a drag strip. So we brought it here to Union
Grove, Wisconsin to Great Lakes Dragaway because we thought maybe we should just
try putting this big cat on the right track. Dodge Engineering has done some
work on the Hellcat Redeye to really make it handle better. It does have a
fully adjustable suspension but most of the components that they've included
with the Redeye are meant for straight-line acceleration and it goes
beyond just the supercharged engine. This has a system called the SRT power
chiller. We first saw that on the Demon and they've included it here. You can
only get it on the Redeye however. What it does and this is a little complicated,
so bear with me a second, is that it cools the coolant that's going through
the superchargers intercooler. Now when air comes into the engine through the
supercharger it gets compressed and that makes it hot so eventually they put it
through an intercooler which cools it down a little bit. Now what the power
chiller does is it cools the intercooler even more and ideally what it does is it
drops the intake charge by 45 degrees Fahrenheit over the ambient temperature.
Now colder air is denser air, denser air means more oxygen, in a given volume more
oxygen, bigger explosions, more power. Now it only works on temperatures above 55
degrees Fahrenheit ambient temperature and today we've got temperatures in the
mid 40s so it's really not going to be a factor but if you're drag racing your car
on a warm day this could really make a difference. The power
chiller works while you are actually racing but there's another feature
called after run chiller that works when you're going between runs. So you've done
your run down the drag strip, you're going back to get in line. If you shut
the engine off to prevent it from getting too hot the air conditioning
system will still run and it will still run the power chiller and it continues
to cool down that intercooler coolant. You can actually monitor how hot the
intercooler coolant is on the Dodge performance pages inside and you can
time your next run when it's at the optimal temperature so you can be making
the most power. If you specify the wide-body package for your Hellcat
Redeye you get these enormous tires these are Pirelli PZero in 305 35 Zr 20.
They are massive and they come with these fender flares as well because they
stick out beyond the edge of the car. Now they put down a lot of grip both in
corners and on a straight line drag way like this. Now you don't have to order
the wide-body package when you get the Redeye but quite frankly, why wouldn't
you? In order to really get some good times on the drag strip you've got to
clean off those rear tires and get some heat into them and Dodge makes that easy
with the integrated line lock control. All you have to do is get into the
central multimedia display. You push SRT and it takes you to the race options
menu, push line lock then activate line lock control. Hold the brakes, push the
okay button and hold it down. Let off the brakes, give it some gas to burn off the
tires amd when you're ready to roll out you let off the okay button and your
tires are now hot and ready for racing. All of these components taken together
should add up to be what creates a pretty spectacular drag race car so
there's really nothing left to do except throw it down the quarter mile and see
exactly what she'll run.
Before the Challenger could start making runs down the quarter mile there are a
few things that have to be adjusted in order to optimize the cars acceleration.
Dodge has engineered a lot of adjustability into the Hellcat Redeye
allowing you to adapt it for street cruising circuit track racing or
blasting down the drag strip as quickly as possible. That's what we're going for
here and after a chat with Dodge's engineering
team here's how we set up the car for our drag strip runs. First, select the
custom drive mode. That lets you adjust the cars various systems independently.
Put the power slider in 797 horsepower mode, obviously, as you want all the
ponies at this party. The most important adjustment is to put the transmission in
track mode. That will bang off shifts as quickly as possible which is what we
want here. Paddles you can leave on or off. We turned them off. The transmission
shifts faster on its own than we ever could manually. Traction control is also
switched to track mode. This switch is off the traction control entirely but
leaves stability control on in its most forgiving mode. Suspension can be in
sport or street but we left it in street mode to enable the most weight transfer
to the rear wheels as possible. Finally, steering we put into sport mode
as we like a little bit of firmness and feedback when we're going over 125 miles
per hour at the end of the drag strip. Finally it's time to run. We started by
giving the tires a good warm-up burnout using the line lock feature these are
street tires and you want them as warm as possible but being street tires they
don't hold heat all that well so a good two-second burnout followed by a 10-foot
rollout is crucial as is getting to those starting timing lights as quickly
as possible. Launching is tricky in a Hellcat. You
have to feather the throttle as mashing it will just set up wheel spin and axle
hop. You can't get on the gas hot and heavy until after the 1/2 shift and even
then you have to be careful. When it all hooks up perfectly however the results
are impressive.
Our first few runs generated low 11 second times but finally we nailed it.
10.8 seconds at 126 miles per hour, just as quick
as Dodge says it is. That this car can do this on pump gas and street tires is
amazing. Even more amazing, the best zero to 60 time being measured for the
Hellcat Redeye was 3.17 seconds beating Dodge's official
3.4 second zero to 60 time for this car.
After testing all morning out here at the drag strip we can unequivocally
state that the new 2019 Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye is in fact a 10-second car
right off the showroom floor. That is extraordinary. What times we live in
folks. If you'd like to read more about the new Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye
or any of the new Dodge Challengers look it up on Cars.com
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