“It were Covid really,” says Bryan Whitfield, “that’s when it all started…” When what started? I asked. “The silly ideas,” he laughs. He does a lot of laughing, does ‘our’ Bryan.
“I’d not long retired – well, sort of – and Ian [Tubb, the other constituent part of this potent cocktail] is in his 70s now, so when Covid hit he felt like he were being robbed of his retirement. I remember ’im sayin’, ‘What’m I gonna do now, just stare out the window ’til I die?’
“We were like, what about this, what about that, and eventually got talking about the old school-style, back-in-the-day Fuel Altereds.”
When talk turns that way, it doesn’t take long for Nick Davies and Rob Loaring’s names to come up in the conversation and, sure enough, they did.
“I’m good mates with Nick and Rob – I painted their Pro Mod – and I’d seen them win at Bakersfield. At first, we were like, build a Nostalgia Fuel Altered? You’ve gotta be kidding. But then when we heard you only need to make about 1300 or 1500 horsepower, so you’re not leaning on it so hard that you break things at every meet, it started to make a bit more sense.”
Sense you say?!
“Well, it never makes sense, but you know what I mean.”
Ground rules
And so a plan was hatched. The
