Brisbane Funny Car racer Steve Ham brings a new car to the fight this weekend as he returns to Willowbank Raceway for the Santo’s Cranes Super 3 Extreme Drag Race in the hotly contested ANDRA Top Alcohol championship.

Recent testing has injected a fresh shot of confidence into the ECL Team, with Ham touting the new Ford Mustang-bodied Funny Car as the most comfortable car he’s ever driven.

“This new combination is a dream to drive. It just feels right,” he said. “From the seating position to the visibility that I didn’t have in the last car, this car was comfortable the minute I sat in it in the workshop, and was even better at full tilt.

“It’s a new chassis and new body but we’ve retained our engine with the NRE-X1 heads because we know we’re on a good thing there and the new car will only allow that power plant to perform better. It’s a great combination all round.”

The team’s crew chief James Rowland was also full of praise for the new advances in the team, with the car leaving so solidly off the line that it headed skyward on its final pass in testing.

“We had a wild run in the last pass when the wheelie bars broke which gave Steve a good look at the moon,” he said. “But on a positive note, we learned a lot in testing about coming to terms with hot tracks which has been a real weakness for us, so we came away from the testing session pretty happy.”

Ham’s view from the cockpit of the wheel-standing antics produced a somewhat more sober response once the car returned to terra firma.

Despite the ECL team pushing the envelope in testing, the strategy will be to run a little more on the conservative side for this weekend’s inaugural Santos Cranes Super 3 Extreme race.

“This is a different format to the traditional elimination style drag racing event, where we will only have one shot at qualifying before having to put in our best performance,” he said. “It’s great for the fans and especially for our sponsors in ECL, Mobil 1 and R.D. Williams, because it guarantees them the optimum exposure.

“It’s just going to put the pressure on us to make sure we get the car down the track consistently without being easybeats. It’s going to be very interesting to see how everyone else treats it as well.”

The Santo’s Cranes Super 3 Extreme Drag Race begins on Good Friday with the first qualifying sessions at 5pm.

Image courtesy Dave Reid/dragphotos.com.au.