When it first broke light the morning after NHRA’s 2018 penultimate race on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Tim Wilkerson’s AA Fuel Altered had everyone’s attention. Whether teams were prepping for the season finale a couple of weeks away, trying out a new driver or checking out new parts, once this flag-liveried car came to the water box, everything else stopped. Using a spare Funny Car chassis and engine from his selection, Wilkerson’s Fuel Altered was, on that day and ever since, considered one of the more intriguing pieces of motor-driven exotica in the world.
Driven by the team’s co-crew chief Richard Hartman, who was part of the build team for this car, that first attempt had everyone on-site in thrall. It wasn’t just the amazing mechanicals of the Fuel Altered that had the straight-line world enraptured, it was the fact that the car featured a wrap celebrating the flag of the United States.
And now, almost seven years on, the Wilkerson Fuel Altered has a new home. After all of these years winning match races – mostly in the midwest since Wilkerson hails from Illinois – it’s been sold to Howard and Shane Farris, owners of the famed War Wagon nitro team. Wilkerson, the 24-time NHRA Funny Car winner, said that sale was one of the most difficult he’s done over the years. He had, obviously, grown attached to the powerful car, which is the first Fuel Altered to earn a sub-five-second run at 4.920 seconds and the first to break the 300-mph barrier in the quarter mile, racing 304.53 mph.
Those times and speeds were reached in 2021, when the car had plenty of laps under its belt. These record runs took place at Texas Motorplex, widely known in NHRA circles as a superlative dragstrip. At the same time Hartman was earning those records, during the first Funny Car Chaos Classic (at the time called Nitro Madness), Team War Wagon’s AA/FA, wheeled by Kebin Kingsley, upped the speed mark to 304.59 mph Just six-hundredths, but that record set by War Wagon remains unchallenged to this day.
This pair of McKinney Corp-produced chassis, both War Wagon and the as yet unnamed former Wilkerson AAFA, the Farris’ now have both the quickest and fastest Fuel Altereds on the planet! Shane Farris, who is the lead mechanic on the War Wagon operation, said his father Howard “had the hare-brained idea the other day to buy Tim Wilkerson’s Fuel Altered.” Perplexed as to why the family would add another wagon to their stable of three, a Fuel Altered, Nitro Pro Mod and Nitro Front-Engine Dragster, Shane asked “why?”
“Well, we could match race ourselves and be the first side-by-side 300mile-per-hour Fuel Altereds,” Shane said his father mused. That idea was sufficient for the Farris group to swing by Wilkerson’s shop in Springfield, IL, en route to the Performance Racing Industry show in Indianapolis, and make the deal. They’d be returning to Texas with another nitro wagon after Wilkerson accepted their offer.
Asked during PRI who’d be driving their fourth car, Howard Farris claimed he was intending to be the new car’s driver: “Well,’ he said, “I’m going to go the the gym, start working out, lose a little bit of weight and see if I can do it!” No stranger to wrangling a Fuel Altered on a dragstrip, with experience back to the 1980s, Howard Farris did say that, if he isn’t capable of getting the car down the track once again, they’ll find an appropriate shoe to put in their second AAFA.
Although Wilkerson’s car had been sitting since its 2021 record-breaking performance, the Farris family thinks it’s got the two best cars in a nitro-oriented family. Now in the stable of Team War Wagon, the former Wilkerson race car is ready to take on the frequent Funny Car Chaos, Nitro Chaos and match-racing dates available in 2025. Anyone ready for side-by-side 300mph-plus Fuel Altered races at a dragstrip nearby? It could happen, and maybe even sooner than anyone has expected.
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