cab forward dragster?

[You!]

This is the Bill Dunlap most of us know and love...

 

[haagar]

- make the rules about safety and cost, and turn everyone loose. Everyone can build a car that costs $150K, no more, based on documented invoices, and meeting all SFI standards for safety, but give everyone the ability to come out of the box with some "out-of-the-box" thinking..

You can spend 2 bazillion dollars on trucks, trailers, spare bits and pieces, handouts, cooks, whatever... but your car as it comes through tech must have a pricetag of $150K (or whatever the going price is now). Manufacturers will be held to the prices on their invoices so that way everyone can get the same super-trick items if they want it for the same price. You make something like heads on a one-off basis where you can't document the price? The invoice will read as the highest submitted price to date for the same type of component

That would make things more interesting and open the door for a lot more inovation in some ways, but would be an absolute nightmare for everyone. It would also do its part to stiffle inovation. Especially the teams that are successful enough to build most of there stuff in house. What would Force do with the ford motor? The price of every piece on it could change every race as other people submit new invoices. Someone who only spent 145,000 on their car could go out and spend a lot of money on a part that they know somone else made custom in an attempt to push the cost of someone elses car over the mark. So now you need more rules to prevent that.

The teams with more could also just borrow the best ideas from everyone else and keep coming out with new cars all the time. Another rule about the number of differrnt cars that you can run during the season. Now
People starting cutting their cars down to just the cage constantly so there is another rule to define what a car consists of.

Now there is pressure on the manufacturers to cut their prices by the teams struggling to keep the car under budget.

In the end most of the cars would still end up looking pretty much the same to the casual fan. Look at formula one for an example. When the high nose first came out there was only one manufacturer that had it. Not too long after every car on the field had it.

Dont mean this to come off as completely trashing the idea. I 100% agree with the basic premise of it and dont have a better suggestion myself. I think maybe just going with the loosen up the rules part and not the money part. Someone without a lot of money could come out with an innovative car and beat everyone. The nhra doesn't want one team domniating (i know it happened last year and in pro stock several years ago) hence all the rules. And once again we are right back where we started.

 

[90-percent]

What I find interesting is that in the PRO nitro arena NHRA has aggressively ruled that no innovation or deviation* is allowed.

I can argue both sides of this, but the philosophy behind this thinking is that you absolutely DO NOT WANT unproven designs in race cars that accelerate from 0 to 100 mph in 8/10 of a SECOND!

So, looking at this design in an A/fuel car, I find it REMARKABLE that NHRA would even let it on their grounds!

I'm a big fan of courage and innovation and I applaud Bill Dunlap for his team's major investment in OUTSIDE THE BOX thinking.

However, I don't understand NHRA's aggressive elimination of innovation in pro nitro completely, and allowing such design freedom for this car, which really aint that much slower than the PRO NITRO cars.

(Which should be correctly termed EXTREMELY LIMITED PRO NITRO.)

I simply hope and pray that this innovative approach does not result in outside the box serious accidents nobody could have concieved of!


-90% Jimmy

* "Without deviation there is no progress" - Frank Zappa

 

[T.Smith]

This is the Bill Dunlap most of us know and love...

YouTube - Dragster Blow Up

 

[Sean D, shondoo]

Thanks for the link, T. That was incredible!

Sean D