Boy oh boy, have we got a ripping episode of Carnage for your eyeballs this week! After months of preparation, our Barra-swapped Mazda MX-5 was finally primed and ready for one last hit at the strip to see how quick it could really go.

In a recent episode, we had the MX-5 on the dyno at Maxx Performance, where the Dandy Engines-built Barra mill made over 1000hp at the hubs. It’s pretty impressive for an engine that only bears aftermarkets rods, pistons and all the big-boy bolt-ons, so we were keen to see what that sort of power could do at the drag strip.

Lance Warren and his team at Heathcote Park Raceway invited us to a private mid-week test day, so we headed up from Melbourne with Maxx tuner Zane Heath along for the ride.

The Mazda’s PB was an 8.72 at over 160mph going into the day, so our goal was to improve on that as best we could. All the gear was there in theory; we just had to put it into practice.

The first attempt resulted in a huge wheelstand, which none of us were expecting except Lance, who’d warned us the track prep was on full kill mode. It’s bloody lucky we had Ben at Top G Fabrications install the belly pan on this thing before we ran it, because the car came down bloody hard; the pan definitely saved the Barra’s low-hanging Territory sump from obliteration.

A quick check-over looked as though the car had survived its attempted launch into orbit, so we sent it down the track for its first full pass. It looked very quick indeed, and the blistering 8.31@169mph timeslip meant our eyes weren’t deceiving us!

That pass was on around 36psi of boost, with another three-to-four pounds still left on the table to play with, along with more aggressive launch settings through the Haltech toggle switch.

So how much quicker did we go on the day? You’ll have to watch the video below to find out!