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Kevin Hart’s Muscle Car Crew Goes to Radford Racing School!

ChargerChallenger

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City
Mopar Nation
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MD
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19 Challenger Hellcat Redeye 19 Charger Hellcat
#1
Which of the Plastic Cup Boyz has the most skill behind the wheel?
Owning a high-performance car doesn't automatically mean one has the skill to handle said performance. We've all seen the videos on the interwebs, heard about uber-rare Porsches and such being completely written off. But the Plastic Cup Boyz—the lifelong group of friends that make up Kevin Hart's Muscle Car Crew—aren't going to be another piece of viral clickbait.

How? By learning advanced car control techniques at Radford Racing School, then hooning it up on the autocross course to find out who the crew's best driver is.
Related: Haven't signed up for your free trial to the MotorTrend App yet? It's the only place to watch Kevin Hart's Muscle Car Crew, the new Top Gear America, Roadkill, and the upcoming Motor MythBusters! Subscribe today!
The Plastic Cup Boyz have been out to car shows, they've been to the track, they know they want more performance out of their cars, but more importantly, they know they need to be able to handle that performance. Harry Ratchford has already taken this concept to heart with his "Quarter Water" 1970 Chevelle by creating a mild-tempered tune in the Holley Sniper EFI system specifically so his daughter can safely drive the 502 big-block.

The best way to learn to control a powerful car (or any car, for that matter) is under the guidance of a professional. So just find a pro racer and rent a track out for a few days and go to town, right? Maybe if you're Kevin Hart and have the means, but there's a better and much more fiscally reasonable way: performance driving school. Rather than having to shoulder the cost of finding instructors, location, and vehicles all on your own (plus all of the different insurance policies), a performance driving school does all that for you.
Radford Racing School (formerly, Bondurant High Performance Driving School) is one of the oldest, most technically diverse, and best driving schools in the world. No other driving school has as many course offerings as Radford, ranging from: basic car control for new drivers, Dodge's SRT Experience for Hellcat owners, karting school, open-wheel racing school, and even a course for earning your 9-second NHRA drag racing license in one of the fastest street-legal production cars ever, the Dodge Demon. Plus, the track is all new and the facilities received a complete makeover during the pandemic downtime. Located in Chandler, Arizona, Radford Racing School is just a short road trip away for the Los Angeles-based Plastic Cup Boyz.
The first rule of operating any sort of vehicle is keep your eyes pointed in the direction you want to go. If you look away from your intended destination, your course will drift and that can lead to bad situations. Naturally, this is the first lesson the guys from Kevin Hart's Muscle Car Crewlearn at Radford. The next concept the Radford instructors teach the Plastic Cup Boyz is weight transfer and how that can affect handling.
When a car accelerates, the torsional forces of the drivetrain and the tires interacting with the road surface cause the front end to lift. As the front of the car rises, the center of gravity (COG) shifts rearward and the rear wheels experience more traction. The exact opposite happens under braking; the front end dives and the COG is shifted to the front of the car and the front wheels are more weighted. Exploiting that weight transfer is how professional drivers get the most out of a vehicle, using weight transfer to load and unload the tires as the situation requires.
Some of the crew had a bit more high-performance driving experience than others. Joey Wells told us, "The only performance driving experience I had prior to Radford was go-kart racing. However, this will not be my last time. I had a ball. NASCAR, look out!" Joey might not have John Cluasell's flair for style (vroom, vroom!) but each of the Plastic Cup Boyz now has a much better understanding of what real car control is.
After a day of instruction on the skidpad, it's time to bust out the cones, timing clocks, and the Hellcat Redeye Challengers! Which of the Plastic Cup Boyz learned the most at Radford? Sign up for your free trial of the MotorTrend App—the only place to watch Kevin Hart's Muscle Car Crewlearn about car culture—to find out.
 




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