John Urist was one of the earliest pioneers of the NMRA’s heralded Super Street Outlaw category, affectionately known as the “Ten-Inch Tire Freak Show”, doing so with a largely outgunned race car and little experience in heads-up racing. But nearly two decades after its inception, there’s no name more synonymous with the class than that of the New Mexico native. Because when you win a unprecedented eight championships in the class —including the Street Outlaw category that it was transformed into in 2013 — it’s hard not to be the face of the class, if not the entire series.

The racer they call “The Fireball” burst onto the scene at the turn of the century with a nitrous-fed Fox body, and racked up his first series championship in 2003. From that point forward, there was no stopping the young driver in arguably the series’ most popular category. At times, he’s strung together three and four titles in a row, and finds himself in such a position in 2014, having won it all the last two seasons.

For many of those championship seasons behind the wheel of his familiar 2000 model Saleen Mustang, and more recently, his 1993 Fox body, Urist has worked closely with and relied on the team at Edelbrock to make his race cars not only quick and fast, but deadly consistent round after round. Even after switching from his trusty supercharger back to a turbocharger in his red rocket in recent years, Urist and company haven’t missed a beat with the power and performance from their small block Ford powerplant.

But just as he’s shown on the race track, Urist didn’t just sit back and wait for things to happen when he was struggling to make reliable power with other cylinder head designs. Instead, he jumped in headlong, working with the engineers at Edelbrock to develop a strong head casting that, as he explains, solved all of the issues he and his team were experiencing.

The result of his input was the Victory SC-1 head, also known as the “Glidden Victor SC-1”. This very cylinder head has powered Urist to five of his eight championships, and has also propelled him into the national record books on an untold number of occasions.

Along with the intake, Urist also runs a single-plane intake manifold developed for applications much like his single turbocharged Ford.

Says Urist, “Edelbrock has spent an immense amount of time creating an intake manifold with a single carbureted entry to have maximum distribution in all cylinders. We’ve taken that intake and increased our performance, because all eight cylinders are running at the same temperature, and getting a majority of the same air per hole.”

On Urist’s sleek Mustang, you’ll also find a full compliment of high performance hoses and hose ends from Russell Performance — a subsidiary brand of Edelbrock.

The result of this combination of SC-1 heads and intake on the boosted small block is power in the range of 1,800 horses, which is enough to propel Urist’s 3,200 lb. machine running on 28-inch, 10.5-inch wide tires to elapsed times under seven seconds and at over 200 miles per hour. And perhaps a ninth championship.