Sorry if I'm ranting a bit but being an owner of a Supra and appreciating first hand what a great car it is...then on top of everything else this Texas Mile achievement is really something outstanding.
I just tried to find the posts about comparing drag coefficients and I think this is reliable but the numbers aren't mine:
The Cd of the Supra is ~ 0.32; not sure what frontal area is but less than the Vipers.
The (Viper) GTS Coupe has a Cd of 0.35 and a frontal area of about 20.56 square feet or 1.91 square meters. This translates to about 11% more drag for the Viper (than the Supra)
One of the twin turbo Vipers who was a top contender blew one of his turbos after a couple runs, I think his best was like 220mph, so I'm sure he could have done better...looking forward to what he does this coming March '09 Texas Mile since competition is a good thing.
The guy who drove (and owns) that mile record breaking black Supra is SW and he's definitely not a noob, he's a very talented racecar driver; his 1/4 drag racing achievements are also at the very top of the best. He got over 229 in his Supra back in March '08 and has since stepped up his game with more power and refinements to be able to achieve this 241.8 mph at the October '08 Mile.
Here's an incar view from the 241.8 mph run:
The guy who's name is on the video above "VRAlexander" owns and drove one of the other Supras which runs two large turbos (SW's has one very large one) but it didn't take top honors, I think he was around 220mph. He also brought along his somewhat famous highly modified Porsche Carrera GT which I love, as well as his modified turbo Porsche 996TT which hit well over 210. When VR posted about going to this event, he mentioned some of his buddies who went and were there to run, so all kinds of very fast modified cars were at the various Texas Mile events, these are just a few from October:
..."So far I have the following confirmations for our group.
1) Me and Tommy with several Supras and a little silver 996tt
2) Eddie Bello 1300hp 964 turbo
3) Todd and the EVOMS gang -several cars
4) Bobby - 1200+hp 993turbo
5) Josh from Autograf- Twin Turbo ford GT 1200+hp
6) Tym Switzer with David's car - 996tt, he wants to push massive boost to see where the break point is, so he can build a new motor..lol..should be some fireworks!..."
Btw, another Supra from Texas (Tommy Bahn) won the Texas Mile top speed honors in a previous event but this year he broke...I didn't watch that first vid again but I think he snapped his driveshaft and he's the one under the car lending some of his parts to one of the other guys.