Another lawsuit? (1 Viewer)

[Ron Middleton]

Luke,
While I agree with you that the Professional Sport Compact teams are a far cry from the local crowd at most race tracks, the technology is awesome, the fact remains that fields have been short, there is lots of breakage, no shows, and very few side by side races. It's real hard to draw a crowd to see racing when there is actually so little of it going on, even if the technology is cool. Just as NASCAR's biggest draw is probably the crashes and not the competiveness of the racing, drag racing spectators want to see racing, wheelies, etc. and not a lot of single runs or a class that only has a couple of competitors in that class or when the number 1 qualifier and number 8 or 16 or 32 are several seconds apart.
NHRA Powerade Pro classes and the NHRA Lucas Oil Sportsman classes generally draw many more competitors and much more exciting qualifying and racing than the sport compact series do. JMT.

 

[Horsepower & Heels]

NOPI is positioning themselves very, very smart in their marketing. You all complain that the sport doesn't reach the recognition, yet you think to the uninformed that drag racing should be the instant love appeal as we all know it?

Draw them in with a "something for everyone" mentality, and you increase the crowd threefold. These people may initially come for the bikini contest, the sound off, or the music, but they may develop an affinity for racing and turn "legit".

And as far as the racing... I'm a domestic racer and I was SHOCKED at the amount of support that NOPI extends to their racers. The series organizers help the racers find sponsors, put together packages for them, promote them... everything you complain the NHRA hinders with its racers.

 

[Sophia]

Luke,
While I agree with you that the Professional Sport Compact teams are a far cry from the local crowd at most race tracks, the technology is awesome, the fact remains that fields have been short, there is lots of breakage, no shows, and very few side by side races. It's real hard to draw a crowd to see racing when there is actually so little of it going on, even if the technology is cool. Just as NASCAR's biggest draw is probably the crashes and not the competiveness of the racing, drag racing spectators want to see racing, wheelies, etc. and not a lot of single runs or a class that only has a couple of competitors in that class or when the number 1 qualifier and number 8 or 16 or 32 are several seconds apart.
NHRA Powerade Pro classes and the NHRA Lucas Oil Sportsman classes generally draw many more competitors and much more exciting qualifying and racing than the sport compact series do. JMT.

Several people have mentioned oils downs and parts breakage all the time. The breakage and oildowns is kinda of a thing of the past. Yes it still happens, but honestly there isn't much of it anymore. It used to be a problem because there were no parts available. Now that there are heavy duty driveline parts available and mandatory catch pans and containment devices, most of that has been cut out. The sport is growing, and a lot of these things are ironing out. Will there be motor failures? Yes. When you are trying to squeeze as much as 12-14hp per cubic inch from a production engine on one-off parts, there will be some occasional failures. Trying to run that kind of power through OEM style gearboxes...they will break if not maintained properly.

As for the classes not being full, that isn't true for all of the classes. Pro Front Wheel Drive is growing HUGE and will have full fields, Modified has full fields, Pro All Motor has full fields, and the sportsman classes have full fields. Pro RWD was just too expensive and the guys that had the bank account to get into that also had the bank to take a stab at Pro Stock. What would you do? Now that there is going to be one major sanctioning body instead of 2, the fields should look much better in the future.

All you guys that have kids coming up in Jr. Dragsters and Bracket racing....stick them in a Sport Compact and get them out there on national television in heads up racing. This is very competitive and is an outstanding stepping stone to the higher ranks of heads up drag racing.

 

[vegasnitro]

Bikini contests .... jello wrestling ....

I think the only other thing they need is a mechanical bull and they really would have something for everybody!!!!

As far as oil-downs go ... I have been to many national events where there are incessant oil-downs from the alcohol and nitro classes. It only seems worse at import shows because the car count is lower.

 

[Toejam]

Luke, I think the Pro Front and Rear wheel cars have won over a lot of fans at NHRA shows. But there are still very few that run in Comp elim. That would be the Best exposure for you guys/gals IMO!

 

[Ron Middleton]

Luke,
Here are some results from Drag Race Central:


Pro RWD Qualifying, Final Order





ENNIS, Texas - Final order after 3 rounds of qualifying in Pro RWD at the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, 22nd annual O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals presented by Castrol Syntec:

Psn---Num-Driver, Home Town, Car Type---------------Qual-ET--Qual-Spd-Top Spd

1 1 Brad Personett, Orlando FL, '08 Scion 6.651 219.61 219.61
2 8 Manny Cruz, Bronx NY, '02 Solara 12.055 84.14 84.14



Pro FWD Qualifying, Final Order





ENNIS, Texas - Final order after 3 rounds of qualifying in Pro FWD at the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, 22nd annual O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals presented by Castrol Syntec:

Psn---Num-Driver, Home Town, Car Type---------------Qual-ET--Qual-Spd-Top Spd

1 699 Marty Ladwig, San Antonio TX, '07 Cobalt 7.181 201.55 201.55
2 1014 Jason Hunt, Crofton NJ, '07 Cobalt 7.242 199.02 199.02
3 44 Gary Gardella, Howell NJ, '07 Cobalt 7.244 201.19 201.19
4 141G Chris Rado, Reading PA, '07 tC 7.447 184.72 189.79
5 750 Ed Bergenholtz, Santa Ana CA, '06 MX-6 7.538 192.17 192.17
6 3 Bryan Jimenez, Houston TX, '07 Cobalt 7.791 181.50 181.50


Sun, 2 Sep 2007, 08:28 PM

Pro RWD Qualifying, Final Order





CLERMONT, Ind. - Final order after 3 rounds of qualifying in Pro RWD at the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, 53rd annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals:

Psn---Num-Driver, Home Town, Car Type---------------Qual-ET--Qual-Spd-Top Spd

1 1 Brad Personett, Orlando FL, '08 Scion 6.421 217.98 217.98
2 6206 Gary Lee White, New Market AL, '05 Scion 6.544 210.83 210.83
3 2142 Boris Rojas, Wilmington DE, '04 Mazda 7.642 169.64 169.64
4 8 Manny Cruz, Bronx NY, '02 Cougar 8.706 156.50 156.50


Pro FWD Qualifying, Final Order





CLERMONT, Ind. - Final order after 3 rounds of qualifying in Pro FWD at the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, 53rd annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals:

Psn---Num-Driver, Home Town, Car Type---------------Qual-ET--Qual-Spd-Top Spd

1 44 Gary Gardella, Howell NJ, '07 Cobalt 7.156 201.91 201.91
2 699 Marty Ladwig, San Antonio TX, '07 Cobalt 7.175 199.97 199.97
3 1014 Jason Hunt, Crofton NJ, '07 Cobalt 7.190 200.59 201.67
4 141G Chris Rado, Reading PA, '07 tC 7.348 193.60 193.60
5 750 Ed Bergenholtz, Santa Ana CA, '06 MX-6 7.845 185.00 185.00
6 3 Bryan Jimenez, Houston TX, '07 Cobalt 8.070 172.78 172.78


Modified Qualifying, Final Order





POMONA, Calif. - Final order after 3 rounds of qualifying in Modified at the NHRA Xplod Sport Compact Drag Racing Series, Seventh Annual NHRA Sport Compact World Finals:

Psn---Num-Driver, Home Town, Car Type---------------Qual-ET--Qual-Spd-Top Spd

1 2589 Brent Rau, St Francis MN, '99 Eclipse 7.336 185.72 187.31
2 4557 Ken Scheepers, Flower Mound TX, '05 RX8 8.275 163.65 164.17
3 7444 Tom Shambaugh, Chandler AZ, '04 Cavalier 15.938 44.84 44.84

POMONA, Calif. - Final order after 3 rounds of qualifying in BFGoodrich Tires Street Stock at the NHRA Xplod Sport Compact Drag Racing Series, Seventh Annual NHRA Sport Compact World Finals:

Psn---Num-Driver, Home Town, Car Type---------------Qual-ET--Qual-Spd-Top Spd

1 6580 Loan Nguyen, Burke VA, '99 Civic 12.162 115.95 115.95
2 729 Frank Silouangkhoth, Syracuse UT, '94 Civic 12.268 113.17 113.84
3 726 Jermey Nicolodemos, West Jordan UT, '98 Neon 12.634 113.22 113.22
4 8125 Jerry Nguyen, San Jose CA, '96 Civic 13.305 106.71 109.35
5 7115 Edwin Argueta, Arleta CA, 13.410 103.32 104.37
6 3196 Mike Chace, Reno NV, '94 Del Sol 14.915 92.20 92.49


It seems to me that with even this sampling fields are still way short compared to current NHRA classes. Wouldn't you agree.
I currently am finishing two NHRA/IHRA stockers and am looking at building a 4 cyl comp car. These classes usually have much larger and tighter fields than any of the sport compact classes do and are much more competitive. I've spent many years drag racing and stock car racing and still think the sport compact arena is still in it's infancy. JMt.

 

[Sophia]

Ron it is definately in its infancy, and if you wnat to go through and grab samples of classes that aren't full, you won't have to look far (as you found there). You could have easily gone through and grabbed snapshots of events that had better turnouts (I think you picked the worst events )

Problems?
1: There are lots of well-prepared cars out there sitting in garages. People can't afford to race them after they build them. I am in the middle of the country and my CLOSEST race this year is 9 hours away. The positive...the people that started into this 10 years ago as the "punk kids with sideways hats" are out of school and their purchasing power is increasing. There is definately more money in SC then there was 5 years ago.

2: Multiple sanctioning bodies. Nopi and NHRA were competing against one another for racers that don't have the budget to run 25 races a year. This problem may be partially solved with the Nopi/NHRA merger and the new 8 race schedule. Nopi is cleaning up their act with the music and T&A also. No more jello wrestling and foam pits fellas

3: SC needs people to stick their Jr. Dragster kids in a SC for heads up racing experience and national exposure. We need to get the guy that is sick of spending $100K a year to get his butt whooped bracket racing locally to say hey..."Wally Parks liked these guys, maybe I'll give this a shot. Heads up could be fun!"

 

[Meeks]

2: Multiple sanctioning bodies. Nopi and NHRA were competing against one another for racers that don't have the budget to run 25 races a year. This problem may be partially solved with the Nopi/NHRA merger and the new 8 race schedule. Nopi is cleaning up their act with the music and T&A also. No more jello wrestling and foam pits fellas

An 8 race schedule that includes only one west coast race...pathetic
Sure hope NOPI can figure it out this year because I know quite a few people arent real happy with them. Also happy to hear they are cleaning up things a little bit...

 

[Sophia]

An 8 race schedule that includes only one west coast race...pathetic
Sure hope NOPI can figure it out this year because I know quite a few people arent real happy with them. Also happy to hear they are cleaning up things a little bit...

It is a bummer and certainly doesn't help SC this year, but NOPI/NHRA tried everything they could to get in touch with Pomona and other California tracks. They simply couldn't come to an agreement on something that fit both schedule requirements and budget. Nopi will be out west when they have more time to come up with a schedule...they were working with 2 weeks to nail down an 8 race schedule. The 8 race schedule is a plus for a lot of teams. I don't see a lot of SC teams with travel money pouring out of their pockets right now.

Nopi asked for help from people who lived near the tracks for track manager's cell phone numbers and some other help locking those in. How many people walked into the Pomona office and said "Hey, we want Nopi/NHRA here next year"???? None. I called them, and I'm a 40 hour drive away. No return call.

 

[Steve Holloway]

Well, the way I see it you have two choices when you can't agree:

1. shootout at high noon, or
2. ask a court to resolve it for you.