If anyone understands the approach of “it’s better late than never,” it would be nitro veteran Cory Lee. 

Lee will drive the New Englander Funny Car this weekend at the team’s home race, the NHRA New England Nationals in Epping, NH. The team has been idle for nearly nine months. 

The excitement level is at an all-time high for the team based out of the northeastern part of the United States. The New Englander Funny Car has been competing at New England Dragway for nearly 40 years with team owner Rhea Goodrich, so it’s only fitting that they will make their long-awaited season debut there this weekend.

Initially, the team was supposed to make its 2022 debut at the recently completed NHRA Virginia Nationals from Virginia Motorsports Park. However, for medical reasons with Lee, the team was forced to push its debut back to its hometown race in Epping, New Hampshire.

Lee is known mainly as a West Coaster, but admittedly he has ties to the region, having been born on a military base in Maine. 

"Pretty exciting; I’ve been losing sleep over this one,” Lee said. “We had a bump in the road. We were scheduled to run in Virginia, but for medical reasons, it didn’t pan out. But a couple of weeks week later, here we are, and we’re ready.”

With lee on the mend, the team used the layoff to upgrade their equipment, adding new parts where needed and procuring new marketing partners in the pursuit of a competitive bid.

“The guys have upgraded the controlling devices for the tuning of the racecar,” Lee explained. “It’s going to refine that area, making it much easier to tune the race car, preset the race car for the run, and ultimately make it a better competitive race car. We’ve also added the swept-back headers for the first time. We were toying with it last year, but we only ran four events, and it was one of those situations where we needed to walk before we could run. 

"Also, some new recording information has been added on the race car as well. One of the devices that I am excited about seeing is data from the infrared on the tire temperature. That’s going to be some good information that we haven’t seen in the past that will help the tuners.”

“So we’re having kind of a reset that will change the feature of the race car. It changes the dynamics of driving the racecar as well. Its exciting that there’s some changes and upgrades that’ll get this car more competitive now with the big dogs.” 

However, the team knows they must keep their expectations realistic and stick to their game plan. 

“We don’t have the heat on us with more than 16 cars trying to qualify,” Lee said. We can go out and keep our heads cool and calm. We will go out on the first round on Friday and take a short run. Going from non-swept-back headers to swept-back headers is a significant tune-up change in the bell housing. So we’re going to take an educated guess but only go about two hundred, maybe three hundred feet at the most, whatever the car will accept on the racetrack. Get that data and come back and make a longer run in Q2, and hopefully, we’ll have enough data by Q3 to make the full pull and see how that goes.” 

Even though the New Englander Funny Car team doesn’t have the quickest or fastest car on the property, they have been known to step up and take out the so-called big dogs when they make a mistake. Most notably, they've been a thorn in John Force Racing’s side in recent years, defeating Robert Hight in the first round in Epping back in 2017, and taking down Courtney Force in the first round in Reading in 2018.

Assigned with making the tuning calls on the New Englander Funny Car team will again be veteran journeyman Johnny West. West's resume speaks for itself, and he has tuned or consulted on many teams throughout his career, recently known for helping a lot of smaller funded teams.

“He’s straight and narrow, and he’s got a good sense of humor,” Lee said. But the fact of the matter is he’s been in this industry a long time, and he’s got a plethora of information and experience and knowledge, and some of the people that taught him along the way like JT Stewart, Roland Leong, these guys gave him good field knowledge and then with his analytical mind he’s taking that ran with it and he’s a jack-of-all-trades.”

In addition to the new upgrades on the car, the New Englander team is very thankful for the local support and the marketing partners that have stepped up to help fund the race team for the New England Nationals and the rest of the season.

“Reservoir Garage, a father and son owned company out of Massachusetts, has been a sponsor on the car for the past four years; they have stepped up to sponsor the car for three races this season,” Team manager Paul Weiss explained. “Northeastern Motorsports out of Cromwell, Connecticut, has stepped up to become a major associate sponsor, and R&R Towing is giving us double what they gave us last year.”

CAVCOMM, Mustang Madness, Maura’s Embroidery, Montauk Native Gas, Wombat, Manley, Jesel, and Amalie have also stepped up to help the team this year.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
The New Englander Funny Car team looks to attend four races this season, starting with the New England Nationals in Epping, New Hampshire, followed by Norwalk, Ohio, and the U.S. Nationals, closing out the year at Maple Grove, Reading, Pennsylvania.