By Mary Lendzion
Photos by NMRA and courtesy of Dom DiDonato
As a fierce competitor with finely-tuned cars, Dom DiDonato has been a force in NMRA Edelbrock Renegade.
Most recently, he finished seventh in points in 2018 in the 2004 Mustang Cobra belonging to C&D Auto Tech and fifth in points in 2017 in his 2008 Mustang GT500.
In the Mustang Cobra packing a 5.8 liter Modular engine by L&M Engines and a Precision 76mm turbo, DiDonato posted a best of 7.29 and 193 mph and was poised to go even quicker and faster with that combination and in that class, but it will have to wait, as he's going in a different direction for the highly-anticipated 25th Annual Nitto NMRA Spring Break Shootout, Feb. 28-March 3 at Bradenton Motorsports Park in Florida.
While his 5.8 liter Modular engine will be under the hood of the 2004 Mustang Cobra, it's packing new cams and a billet crank, and rather than his 76mm turbo, it will be fronted by an 88mm Garrett turbo massaged by Forced Inductions, and Paul Revaitis from PNR Welding fabricated two new ice tanks for the combination in short order. In addition to that, rather than Edelbrock Renegade, DiDonato will compete in VP Racing Fuels Street Outlaw.
Craig and Daniel Pachar of Triangle Speed Shop will continue to lay the tunes with Holley EFI and Chuck Wrzesniewski, DiDonato's business partner for C&D Auto Tech, will continue to perform the work on the car and serve as crew chief.
We were having success in Renegade, but we thought we would put a bigger turbo on and try Street Outlaw for the NMRA race this weekend in Florida and X275 for the Sweet 16 race in Georgia at the end of March, said DiDonato.
DiDonato will continue to rely on his Proformance Racing Transmissions-built two-speed Turbo 400 and ProTorque EV1 converter, and his car will roll on Mickey Thompson drag radials.
The changes he made to move from Edelbrock Renegade to VP Racing Fuels Street Outlaw and X275 were minimal, and that's one of the aspects that he found attractive.
We haven't tested this combination, so we have no idea how we'll do this weekend, said DiDonato, who also competes in Ultra Street. But the nice thing is that we have the option to easily go back to Renegade trim, which also would be Ultra Street trim. It basically just involves the turbo swap.