Charger Hellcat Runs a 9.78 Against a Whipple-Supercharged Challenger at Island Dragway

A stock-appearing Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat sedan just went into a 9-second pass at Island Dragway in Great Meadows, NJ, and the car it was racing was no pushover. As covered by autoevolution, the Charger lined up against a Whipple-supercharged Dodge Challenger Scat Pack 1320 — a quarter-mile-focused machine with serious forced induction layered on top of the 392. The Charger ran a 9.78 at 144 mph. The Challenger posted a 10.22 at 131 mph. The four-door took the win by half a second and 13 mph, neither of which are small margins.

What 144 mph at the finish line demands from your front brake system is worth taking seriously. Getting a 4,500-lb sedan stopped safely after a 9-second pass puts real heat into the rotors, and doing it repeatedly across a full day of strip sessions is exactly the kind of use case that reveals where stock hardware has its limits. The factory Brembo six-piston front calipers on the Hellcat platform are a strong base. The upgrade path most owners miss is in the rotor itself.

Alcon's competition two-piece rotor set for the 2021 and later Charger and Challenger SRT Hellcat is built to a different standard than any OE replacement. These are the same people who supply rotor technology to race series around the world, and the Hellcat fitment reflects that pedigree. Two-piece construction pairs a billet aluminum hat with an Alcon competition-spec rotor ring, allowing the ring to float and expand under heat load without distorting the hat. The result is better thermal stability, reduced rotor runout over a long session, and a surface that holds up under the kind of repeated hard stops a strip day produces. The machined finish and Alcon branding look exactly as serious as the engineering behind them.

The Alcon Competition 2-Piece Rotors for the 2021+ Dodge Charger | Challenger SRT Hellcat are sold as a pair and priced at $1,400. For anyone running a Hellcat at the strip, tracking it, or simply wanting the best-spec rotor the platform can run, this is the top of the catalog for this fitment.

They also look the part. Behind an open-spoke wheel, the two-piece Alcon setup is immediately recognizable to anyone who knows what they're looking at — and to plenty of people who don't. It's the kind of hardware that belongs on a car running 9s.

For more Hellcat quarter-mile coverage, see our earlier post: Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye Runs a 9.46 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.