So the decision of a prominent circuit racing practitioner, Team West-Tec, to field this season’s Lucas Oil Top Fuel Dragster for Andy Carter is a drag racing milestone. Carter’s on-track exploits are a matter of record, and his off-track achievements in building premium marketing partnerships should not be overlooked either. The four-time FIA European Top Fuel champion returns with a crew led by former colleagues Ben Allum and Eddie Corr following four years’ productive partnership with Denmark’s Per and Karsten Andersen. Carter himself does have background elsewhere in motorsport, having started his racing life on the hot rod ovals, while his son, Albert, now makes pre-teen waves in junior karting.

Team West-Tec was founded in 1987 when Gavin Wills, an accomplished Formula Ford racer, decided it was time to move into team management and racecar design and engineering. The team is headquartered at Corby, close to Rockingham Motor Speedway, the northern apex of Northamptonshire’s ‘motorsport triangle’. Just 26 miles (42 km) south, at the second apex, is Santa Pod (technically just across the Bedfordshire county border) and the triangle’s western point is Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix (and also of ICE Automotive, the company turbocharging Graham Ellis’s Pro Mod Plymouth Superbird).

Over the years, Team West-Tec has achieved success in Formula Ford, Formula Renault, Ferrari Challenge and Rockingham’s former ASCAR/Days Of Thunder series. The company’s current main focus is the European Open Formula 3 series and it is also active in British F3, Le Mans sportscars and Formula Ford. Silverware lines a long corridor at the Corby headquarters, testament to successes gained just in the decade since the company first occupied the premises.

The building contains extensive manufacturing, fabrication and repair facilities, for racecars and transporters, including a ‘carbon room’ that can handle all but the most extreme bodywork requirements. While some staff busy themselves with hardware, others work away at computer screens. Mr. Wills admits his own racing career featured the occasional crash; his driving style demanded that he learn quickly every aspect of the repair and rebuild processes for himself, and his background as a qualified engineer helped him devolve those skills throughout the company. In addition to its own activities, Team West-Tec uses its accumulated expertise to provide support programmes to other operators. Its current contracts include no fewer than four Le Mans teams.


Andy Carter will pilot for Team West-Tec

The company has also developed an on-site F3 driving simulator, a vital tool for its own and other teams’ drivers. When a single day’s test session in a Le Mans car can cost £30,000 (€33,750), the simulator’s value becomes apparent. Using this technology as a basis, the company plans to develop a systems simulator for the Top Fuel Dragster once it has begun to produce data on the track.

In the main hall, it seems something of a surprise to see two Lucas Oil Top Fuel chassis ranged alongside F3 and FF cars. Ben Allum is engaged full-time in meticulous preparation of the racing machine for its FIA Main Event debut in May while other crew members assist part-time. The second chassis is the show car.

In 1992, another circuit racing entrant, Colin Bennett’s Cobra Motorsport, disclosed plans to field a Top Fueler, but the venture never materialised. So what, 19 years later, prompted Team West-Tec to step into drag? Gavin Wills explains:

“Quite simply, we foresee substantial business potential in Pro-level drag racing. The spectator experience is quite special, as good as anything in motorsport and better than most. In our experience, corporate involvement starts with client entertainment, and in terms of entertainment quality, the drag racing ‘show’ is superb. Furthermore, in comparison with our circuit racing business, a drag team’s cost base is attractively low.

“Drag racing’s two main drawbacks are the weather and poor track facilities. Everyone in the sport knows that rain stops the show, and is accustomed to that, but that’s no good for high-level corporate customers and potential investors. You can’t stop it raining, so the sport needs to develop effective contingency programmes to cope with that. Track operators also need to improve the facilities they offer their visitors. Some tracks are better than others but, to me, these improvements are the first essential, the primary requirement. If these matters can start to be addressed, I think drag racing has much it can offer us. We are developing a business plan that foresees our growing involvement.”

And if proof were needed of Mr. Wills’ commitment to his business, last year, he says, he spent 48 of the 52 weekends attending to his company’s interests at racetracks all around the world. Moreover, to acquaint himself better with the drag racing experience, he obtained an NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car licence at Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School.

Drag racers may be surprised to learn that their costs are considered comparatively low. According to Britain’s Autosport magazine, a driver seeking a season’s racing in Formula Renault UK needs to bring UK£200,000 (€230,000) to the deal; for British F3, the figure is half a million pounds, perhaps three quarters of a million for a front-rank ride. Mr. Wills does not dispute these figures.

“Each of our F3 cars is supported by an individual business, and we currently have four undertaking the full European Open series with a couple more planned later in the year. In sponsorship terms, the kind of investors with whom we deal will expect to take a top-level corporate box at Twickenham, say, or Royal Ascot, which is why we place so much emphasis on drag racing raising the standard of its facilities. We feel the drag racing ‘show’ is good enough to merit this kind of interest and investment.”

Of course, measured by money-versus-distance, major league drag racing’s costs and rewards might match anything in motorsport. At Indianapolis in 2010, Larry Dixon collected US$100,000 for winning Top Fuel at NHRA’s US Nationals. For winning the Indy 500, Dario Franchitti netted almost 28 times as much but had to race 500 times further to earn it. The $5 million per year said to be the going rate to support a leading NHRA fuel team seems small change alongside other major motorsports. Yet a Pro driver who completes every qualifying session and reaches every final round on NHRA’s current 22-race calendar (never yet achieved) would cover precisely 44¼ miles in an entire season, roughly one quarter the distance of a single F1 Grand Prix, or 18 laps of a NASCAR superspeedway. Multiply up those sums and drag racing finances would soar to the heavens.

Such calculations, though, are academic. The key point is, ‘mainstream’ motorsport represents an untapped resource for drag racing.

Rubbing shoulders with racing people of all kinds at events such as Autosport-International and the Goodwood Festival Of Speed, one soon notices how little drag racing awareness exists in the wider community. Now that Gavin Wills has spied business value for his company in the sport, Andy Carter, Ben Allum and the Lucas Oil team will be determined to endorse his judgement with fresh championship-calibre successes. Perhaps then Team West-Tec’s pioneering initiative might tempt others to venture across the divide and evaluate drag racing for themselves.