SmokinStangs Laconia is the premier Mustang event in the New England area, held each year in Laconia, New Hampishre.  It’s a three-day event encompassing a drag night, autocross, three-lap tour of New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and car show. This year, a new competition was laid out for the Mustang owners to determine who had the best all-round ‘Stang on the premises – one that Baltic, Connecticut’s Jonathan Roberts has been dying to attempt – The Ultimate Street Mustang Challenge.

The drag night is held at New England Dragway on the first night of the event, and Connecticut’s Jonathan Roberts put his Dez Racing-tuned 2012 Boss Mustang onto the track. The car features a set of Kooks long-tube headers, JLT cold-air kit, UPR upper and lower control arms, a Compucar nitrous system, and a set of Mickey Thompson drag radials.  Roberts was able to click off runs in the 11.40 range at over 124 mph in his first time out with the nitrous system on the car. The car makes 549 rwhp and 517 ft./lbs. of torque on the Dez Racing dyno, but that’s not all it’s good for. Roberts built it to be his version of the ultimate Mustang, as it has some appearance mods – many of which are owner-designed like the custom-painted wheels – in addition to the performance goodies.

Roberts recently went to the Boss Track Attack School at Miller Motorsports Park, which is a complimentary driving school offered by Ford Motor Company for all new 2012 Boss Mustang owners, and came away thoroughly impressed with the experience.  That track experience set him up with the knowledge he needed to take the Auto-X portion of the SmokinStangs challenge by storm, and he then went on to place second in the Auto-X portion of the event.

Three laps around the “Magic Mile” at New Hampshire Motor Speedway left him sitting in the catbird seat heading into Sunday’s car show, but he still needed to wait until the judging was complete find out that he won the overall award. Check out the great videos of Jonathan’s unique Boss on the track – this is a true, daily-driven 2012 Mustang that has had 19,000 miles on it since Jonathan purchased it – and he was deployed for six months of that time on a boat in the Navy. 

He told us, “The whole event was great, even though I spent the weekend in a great deal of back pain. I pulled something on Saturday morning and even considered going to the hospital.  I’m proud to be the first winner in a class that tests all the attributes of what is a real street car.”