New GEICO/Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster crew chief Aaron Brooks went into the week's testing session at Palm Beach International Raceway with some trepidation, but left with a great deal of enthusiasm.

"The last three years, I've started each season with a new team," Brooks said. "It can take a long time to get everybody on the same page. These guys on the GEICO team have been together a while, and it showed. Everyone was flawless.

"I didn't realize just how well we were doing," Brooks said. "The second or third day we ran a 3.80 and Morgan came back to the pit with a big smile and said, 'Man I've never gone that quick before.'”

Another new Top Fuel team was led by Joe Barlam, new crew chief of the Brandon Bernstein driven MavTV/Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster. The new team arrived at the test session with a long to-do list to make sure his car would be ready for the 2012 season.

"I've known Brandon since I worked on his dad's Funny Car in 1988," Barlam said. "I've worked with or been around most of the rest of the guys on this team for several years. The foundation was there."

The first order of business was to get the car custom-tailored to fit Bernstein.

"We took an old backup car we raced in Pomona a few years ago," Barlam said. "We went through the car and made enough revisions and improvements to it that it may was well be a brand new car.

"We've changed every part to fit Brandon and the way he drives. This car may be the most comfortable he's ever driven because many of the cars he's driven were built to fit his dad, Kenny, and those two guys are not built the same."

Robert Hight ended the two day PRO Winter Warm-Up with a thundering, 4.034 seconds at 316.67 mph run, which was the quickest and fastest Funny Car run of testing. Hight and the Auto Club Ford Mustang were also the quickest Funny Car in the first session posting a 4.071 second run at 315.49 mph.

Robert Hight and Cruz Pedregon.  (Steve Gruenwald photo)

“I know we have at least one more day, but I’m hoping maybe two more days that we can play around. We’re really learning a lot. We’ve got Ron Armstrong here helping us; kind of a new addition to our brain trust and when you’re not tuning a car, you look at things a little differently. He really looked at some things and brought them to Jimmy’s (Prock, Crew Chief) attention and man, it’s fixed this thing, so along with some of the new things that we haven’t run yet, I’m excited,” said Robert Hight.

“And no matter what anybody out here tells you, you know, this is still a race. Okay, yeah, there isn’t a trophy and there’s no money, but you still want to beat those guys. Right now pretty much everybody’s done testing and we’re leaving here with low ET (elapsed time, at 4.034) and top speed (316.67 mph) and that goes along way for our confidence moving into Pomona.”