T&T has pro­duced a dri­ver ca­pa­ble of com­pet­ing against the best in the world with a car that is prob­a­bly the fastest and most pow­er­ful top drag­ster ever built. Shel­don Bisses­sar, nick­named the "Trinidad Rock­et", crowned off a record-break­ing year in his new­ly-built methanol-pow­ered Top Drag­ster race­car by bet­ter­ing his per­son­al best open out­law class record and top drag­ster track record at Braden­ton Mo­tor­sports Park a fort­night ago. The event fea­tured both top drag­sters and al­co­hol front-en­gine drag­sters. Bisses­sar set out to the track two days be­fore qual­i­fy­ing be­gan to en­sure that every­thing was work­ing prop­er­ly and had a very suc­cess­ful test run. He wrote his name in the record books on the third and fi­nal day on­ly af­ter two rounds, when his Par­ty Time Rac­ing Team (PTRT) de­cid­ed to put on a fresh set of tires.

The de­ci­sion worked mag­ic as Bisses­sar blazed past his per­son­al best time of 5.77sec­onds at 242mph, al­so done at Braden­ton, with an amaz­ing 5.73-sec­ond pass at 243mph. Ac­cord­ing to crew chief Aaron Sip­ple, "the ma­jor­i­ty of the en­gine's po­ten­tial has yet to be shown". "With near-per­fect con­di­tions like those ex­pe­ri­enced at the Snow­bird Na­tion­als in Braden­ton, the team feels con­fi­dent that a 5.68 time is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty," added Sip­ple. "This new top drag­ster track record and open out­law class record of 5.73 sec­onds is the fastest known top drag­ster time done at an NHRA sanc­tioned race­track any­where in the world." On the first day of qual­i­fy­ing, the Trinida­di­an set the pace with the fastest time of the day of 6.00 sec­onds. No oth­er car was able to suc­cess­ful­ly go any faster.

On Day Two of qual­i­fy­ing, crew chief Sip­ple un­leashed very mild in­crease in pow­er which Bisses­sar was able to trans­late in­to a phe­nom­e­nal 5.82-sec­ond run at 229mph. Track con­di­tions were def­i­nite­ly bet­ter on Day Two with ide­al track and am­bi­ent tem­per­a­tures. Cold­er track tem­per­a­tures usu­al­ly make it hard­er for tires to main­tain trac­tion while cold­er air tem­per­a­tures al­lows the en­gine to make more pow­er. The car's set­tings were very mild and the team was pleased with this time, a mere four hun­dredths of a sec­ond off his IHRA World Record of 5.78. The re­duc­tion in weight of over 150lbs and the brand new chas­sis and nose wing has al­lowed the car to run faster times with less ef­fort.

Be­sides the qual­i­fy­ing runs of all the cat­e­gories, the crowds were treat­ed to ex­hi­bi­tion pass­es by the Cool Bus, a school bus mod­i­fied to wheel­ie all the way down the track. Af­ter this a pair jet-pow­ered drag­sters lit up the night, fol­lowed by a sin­gle pass by the jet-pow­ered truck. For 2010, Bisses­sar man­aged five In­ter­na­tion­al Hot Rod As­so­ci­a­tion (IHRA) wins, the IHRA Top Drag­ster World Record and the Open Out­law Drag­ster Class and Track Record - some­thing that has nev­er been ac­com­plished by any oth­er dri­ver world­wide. Bisses­sar and the PTRT rac­ing team thanked their spon­sors Methanex, the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, To­tal Lu­bri­cants, VP Rac­ing fu­els and PSTL for it sup­port dur­ing the year.