John Farr, you are partially correct about the Army deal. In exchange for the sponsorship of the Youth & Education Services program the Army was granted the exclusive right to gather the names of potential recruits at the track. That sponsorship is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $350,000, but I can’t and won’t swear to that.
This is an EXCEPTIONALLY advantageous deal for the Army. What they pay for the YES program is a pittance out of their budget, and every single benefit goes to them, NOT the NHRA.
For example, due to federal edicts, no military recruiters are allowed to show up at any public school in a military vehicle, i.e., a Humvee or even some sort of tracked vehicle. The fear was that a naïve young person might be influenced by seeing the “cool” military vehicle. BUT, during the YES programs at the NHRA events they can “show” those potential recruits anything from an up-armored Humvee to an A-10 Warthog. They can demonstrate their climbing wall. They can do literally anything they want, WHICH THEY CANNOT DO AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL.
The end result of the exclusivity in name gathering is that despite NHRA’s vocal protests that they aren’t keeping out any other branch of the military, no other branch wants to get involved. Trust me on this – several racers have gotten very close to deals, but each and every time the fact that they couldn’t gather names killed the deals at the highest levels.
Military recruiters aren’t stupid. They know they’re not going to sign someone up in the pits. It’s not going to happen without a home visit so they can assure the kid’s mother that he won’t come home in a body bag. If they can’t gather names for that follow-up visit, why make a $3M investment just to have their name and logo on a car?
I have written about this before in more than one blistering editorial, which NHRA conveniently ignores.
This is an absolute win-win deal for the Army and a lose-lose deal for NHRA.
What happens when the Army decides to try something else and bails on Schumacher and the NHRA? My concern is that the other branches of the military won’t come aboard because they might be thinking, Hey, if this stuff wasn’t good enough for the Army, it’s not good enough for the Air Force/Navy/Marines/Coast Guard either.
But let’s hope I’m wrong and a flood of military-backed teams suddenly appear.
As far as IHRA is concerned, I think a lot of us would have liked to see them become a truly viable alternative to NHRA. Not to hurt NHRA, but just to be there as somewhere else to race. But that didn’t happen because of the way IHRA did things. Their current program of “national events” appears to be a joke, and my understanding from sources that should know suggests they’re hemorrhaging money. One wonders how long Feld will hold onto this moribund property. My understanding is that they had less than 200 cars for last weekend’s “national event” in Martin, Michigan.
There’s also no question that the unspoken animosity that once existed between NHRA and IHRA was a negative for NHRA. For example, they had to be “forced” into accepting scheduled professional qualifying sessions. NHRA didn’t want to do it because it was an IHRA concept. The Media Department actually forced their hand when the then head guy told management, “Right now when the Indianapolis Star calls and asks me what time Don Garlits is going to run I have to tell them, ‘Any time between eight in the morning and six in the evening.’ When they hear that they don’t come out. If I could give them a SPECIFIC time when all the pros are going to run, they’ll be here – with a photographer.”
Jon Asher
) Also the worst isn't meant to be a bash on nhra, bad things happen that are not under their control so think big,
