Mark Coulsell from Limited Funz Racing lends us his thoughts from 2024,
Mark Coulsell - BallBreaker - Super Pro ET
2025 will be our 3rd year in Super Pro ET & we are absolutely loving racing in this class. I (Mark) raced with The Wild Bunch for 26 years & enjoyed every moment of it. It's a fantastic class where I achieved some great results, made some lifelong friends, had so many laughs & made many memories. Unfortunately the numbers were dwindling at MSA/MSUK level & we were hungry for a bigger challenge plus with Harley & Ada racing in Junior Dragster, it made more sense & was more cost effective to do the same meetings that the Juniors were invited to so that combination was what made us make the very difficult decision to leave to race with Super Pro ET.
2023 was a fantastic season for BallBreaker with us winning SPRC Best Appearing Car just to add to the delights. We were all looking forward to 2024 & it started very well. Summer Nationals is where things started to go wrong & we encountered a few issues. Problems didn't got away & Euro Finals & National Finals were both fraught with more issues! The 1st elim at the final meeting of the year was the final straw when I heard a weird noise & felt a strange vibration before even doing the burnout so clicked it off.
We still haven't completely finished stripping everything to see what the full extent of what we're looking at (£$£$) & as I write this, The Chief, Steve Cassisi, is on his way for another day of analysis.
So what 2025 will bring we don't yet know. Obviously we want to race but with the ever rising cost of living & race parts, we may have to sit this one out or rob a bank ;) Fingers crossed things aren't too bad & we can come out & race with Super Pro ET & maybe even improve on our 10th position but only time will tell :)
Ada Cassisi - Cherry Bomb - Junior Dragster JMA
Ada has been loving her time racing in Junior dragster in Cherry Bomb which is one of the LFR family cars, originally Harley Coulsell's first Bandit 1. Ada struggled to find consistency this year due to her almost out growing the car and with it's little engine. She did manage to achieve 10th place in the championship which we as a team were all very pleased about. Ada is very excited about stepping up into Harley's JMA Bandit 1 in 2025. If we can find a new body it will look very similar to the current Cherry Bomb, if not then you will see Bandit 1 out for another year with Ada at the helm.
Photos with thanks to Julian Hunt, Tog & Blackett Photography
Next up is painter and decorator, taxi driver and Ford fan, Terry Newton:
2024 has been an amazing year for us. We started the year doing 8.9s. And decided to see what we could do. We broke and engine early in the year. Then doorslammers was excellent. We hit the magical world record for a fwd ford. The meguiars ford focus managed 8.76 at 162. We did 8.76 at 165. So we are pushing with the old zetec engine. Back end of the year after struggle with drives shafts we did 169 mph with a delicate start so there's plenty more to come.
Target for 2025 is billet block fitted and shoot for the sky and try for low 8s with the van. 180 mph is the target We also should have the zetec dragster out with me displaying my L plates. It will be the first zetec turbo dragster in the world I believe. Target is 6 seconds and 200 mph.
Nathan Hulkes , Mustang driver lends us his thoughts on the season:
So last season for me was building the car. I brought the car from Andrew Chilton in October 2023, the Przybyls imported car from the states and did a stunning paint job on it. I got the car to mine for Christmas that year and set about the build. In the year I completely wired and plumbed the car, built the 420ci LSX and turbo system. Edge performance built me a 2000bhp capable powerglide.
I managed to get the car out for the fireworks event at Santa Pod this year, unfortunately only managed one run due to the weather which netted me a steady 11.7 at 144mph. It was only to make sure we was ready for next season anyway. It showed up a few things to changed for next season.
So this winter I have a small oil leak to sort, remake and move the puke tank to the boot. Plus a few other little changes. I’m hoping next season to run in super Pro ET and 7.60 Heads Up, but it’s going to be a steep learning curve. Would like to say a massive thank you to my wife for putting up with me while never being in the house.
Massive thanks to ASD Fuel Tech UK Authorised Dealer for all there help, John Sleath Race Cars for the mapping , Edge Performance Transmissions, Straight To The Point Racing, Hashtag Mechanic Ltd sponsoring, Pete Smith Pragmatis sponsoring me, Andrew Chilton sponsoring all my laser cut CHILTON MOTORSPORT Lazer Cutting. Lastly Jason Clark Joe Baxter and Jamie binnie. Everyone needs a team behind them.
