The Easter Thunderball
Friday (set-up day)

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18:45

Good evening and welcome to the first update of the weekend from Santa Pod Raceway, brought to you in association with e-manumit.com and High Performance Heaven.

It is very windy indeed here at Santa Pod. We are sitting up in the Tower and it is rocking back and forth as if a jet car was pulling afterburner pops. We've had sporadic rain, usually a few minutes' heavy downpour and then a couple of hours dry.

A number of racers are already in place in the pits, and we ahve even had a few engine warm-ups. Both of Martin Hill's Fireforce Jet Funny cars are out on show. Martin tells us that the plan this weekend is to get Tony Baker settled into Fireforce 1, and to put in a few launches in Fireforce 2, with the intention to culminate in a full-on half-pass on Monday. Martyn Hannis and Doug Bond are here with the ex-Barry Sheavills TMD, which has a new retro supercharger, freshened heads, 'unbreakable' rods ("We'll break 'em!", said Martyn) and reworked mags. Pitted not far along is Lindsay Deuchar on a very welcome return to SPR. Lindsay has a new computer on the car, "It cost the same as a house in Barnsley and it doesn't work!" he said.

There are some great new paintjobs in the Top Methanol pits. The Nemesis TMD is now in a superb blue and white scheme showing off the colours of major sponsor Lucas Oils to great effect. Lex Joon's Ford Probe FC is now mainly in black with flames, we also noticed a screw blower and much larger spill plates. Both cars have additional sponsors' decals to be applied.

The Milams towed in this afternoon with the She Devil TMFC. It has a very simple but effective paintjob, mainly in yellow, also with flames. We will talk to the Milams tomorrow about their foray into Methanol. Next to Steph is Malta's John Ellul, who must have the largest crew ever - there seem to be about twenty people working on and around the car.

All of the Fuel Funny Car contingent are on site. Gordon Smith told us that he is "ready to rock and roll". Smax Smith said "I know I've got to take it easy, I'm here to licence".

Peter Beck's Top Fueller looks good in its mainly black paintscheme with what looks like sponsorship from Hockenheim. The car has a dragon or some other creature painted on its nose (not unlike Peter Schofer's car), and now has large front wheels. The Fueller was being SFI-specced by Jeff Martin and a colleague, a painstaking process which includes chemical tests with sulphuric acid and litmus paper to check for chrome content in the tubing. Peter's car appeared to be passing tech easily, with the tubing over spec on every test we saw carried out.

Pro Mod racer Henri Joosten is a very generous chap. No sooner had we gone and said hello to him than he pulled out a couple of presents for us. Basically, they appear to be gift boxes (actually they also look like parachute packs) but when you unzip them and turn them inside out, they become teddy bears. He went on to tell us that the car has been completely reworked by Andy Robinson, with a new four-link suspension, a new rear-end ratio, longer wheelie bars, and work on the body. So, it appears that we won't be seeing the spectacular wheelies any more - Henri's done the Show, now he is going to do the Go. He said that he was testing this weekend and would be happy if he broke his personal best ET of 7.25.

On two wheels, Chris Hall showed us a new secret weapon on his Funny Bike - a green button. This, he told us, was about the sum total of new parts added over the winter. We understand that the button is the bike equivalent of a transbrake, and is linked to the Nitrous system.

Super Street Bike Champion Graham Dance is quietly optimistic. He has completed pre-season testing at Run What You Brung events without any hiccups. "We've done everything we had to do", he said, adding that this will allow him to go straight into competition mode this weekend.

Needless to say, it is now a beautiful evening. Still very windy, but hardly a cloud in the sky. Let's hope it stays that way.

We have now posted some shots from the pits, you can get to these from the race update index (which is where you came from so just press your Browser's Back key). We'll be back tomorrow with the latest from the pits.