In the following videos, we see a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat line up against a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT 392. While both Challengers are close brothers in resemblance, the difference in horsepower numbers between the two is quite substantial. When asked who would win a drag race between the two, most people would naturally chose the Hellcat simply based on the numbers. However, certain people will tell you, numbers don’t always mean everything.

Some argue that high horsepower is useless if you can’t get that horsepower to the ground properly. That has been the case with numerous videos floating around the internet of Hellcats running the 1/4 mile, most of them on street tires. In many of these videos, we see the driver do a burnout to heat the tires up, roll up to the staging line, stage, launch on green, and then smoke the tires 60 feet down the track resulting in a horrible time slip. In some cases, the other car in the race may have less horsepower but if they get traction, you’ll see them beat the faster car that spun half way down the track. In other cases, the driver of the faster car may make a critical mistake thus allowing the slower car to win. We’ve seen this happen time after time at my local race track.

The video below was taken at the Mopars at the Strip event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway back in March. The recording was taken from a dash cam inside the SRT 392. In the video, we see the Challenger SRT 392 ahead of the SRT Hellcat for most of the race until he gets passed right at the end. Upon doing some research into what happened during that race, I came across a few comments from the owner of the black SRT 392 and from what we can tell, the owner of the Sublime Hellcat.

John Smith- owner of the black Challenger SRT 392:

“The reason I almost beat him is because he forgot to put the car back in drive for the run. So he went to the rev limiter in first gear and sat there for a couple seconds before upshifting. The next pass I saw him run was an 11.48 at 121, which would be about normal for a Hellcat at 2000 feet actual altitude (3500 DA). I also hear there were some running high 10’s at that altitude during this event. That would be truly exceptional but I did not see this myself.”

Aaron Vogel- owner of the Sublime Challenger SRT Hellcat:

“Yea that was me haha, I only made that mistake once though. After that I was running pretty consistent all weekend 11.4xx at 120-121. Did a best of 11.3 on Sun, but spun later that day during my bracket. But not to bad for only having the car 3 weeks, and first time racing a DRs. The Hellcat against the Tesla was running a tad better and I think he did a 10.9 once, but he was also running low 11s pretty consistently.”

It seems this one was chalked up to driver error on the Hellcat’s part. If you’re interested, here is another video taken by John Smith featuring his SRT 392 beating yet another Hellcat. This time it was due to the Hellcat running a 6-speed manual transmission and street tires vs John’s SRT 392 running an 8-speed automatic and drag radials. Proof that the argument is true, horsepower doesn’t mean anything if you can’t get it to the pavement properly!