Aaron Brooks knows what a human version of a steam locomotive feels like. The up-and-coming tuner, named as the new crew chief for the forthcoming Al-Anabi/Alan Johnson Racing Funny Car in 2009, has been extremely busy in the past few weeks preparing for his new venture.

“The parts are all rolled in; the cars are coming next week,” Brooks added. “The bodies are starting to show up; we’ve been full steam ahead for a couple of weeks now.” Aaron Brooks knows what a human version of a steam locomotive feels like. The up-and-coming tuner, named as the new crew chief for the forthcoming Al-Anabi/Alan Johnson Racing Funny Car in 2009, has been extremely busy in the past few weeks preparing for his new venture.

“The parts are all rolled in; the cars are coming next week,” Brooks added. “The bodies are starting to show up; we’ve been full steam ahead for a couple of weeks now.”

Brooks confirmed new driver Del Worsham will field a slightly redesigned 2009 Toyota Solara body mounted on chassis fabricated in Worsham’s in-house chassis shop.

The challenge of starting from scratch is nothing new for Brooks, who came to the Al-Anabi/Alan Johnson Racing group from the R2B2 Motorsports team which ran under the Gotham City Racing banner at the start of 2008. He left Don Schumacher Racing to start up a second car for Gotham City Racing.

“It’s like we started a year ago except we got a two month head start,” Brooks admitted. “So it’s a lot of work but it feels like we did it just yesterday. It didn’t take much to remember all the things we have to do; so it’s going pretty smooth.”