90-percent
Nitro Member
This entire thread is based on the premise that the NHRA has an interest in learning.
What's to learn if you already know everything?
NHRA is more interested in extracting an ever bigger portion from a pie they themselves are shrinking. Crony Capitalism as practiced by a not for profit corporation. As long as the people at the top are satisfied with their personal earnings, why should they care about growing the sport?
Ahhh, for a modern day Larry Carrier or Jim Tice to give NHRA the competition they need to get on the ball. They've been on Peter Principal auto-pilot for over 20 years now and it works for them, so why should they care about the state of modern drag racing?
It is unfortunate they seem to be getting their greedy little hands all over nostalgia nitro racing. That entire community was borne from all those that still liked nitro, but wanted the "three guys with good jobs" Goodguys paradigm, instead of dedicating their lives in servitude of muiti-million dollar budgets and corporate sponsors just to go out there.
But, consider the source here. I've been a knee jerk NHRA basher for a long time, now, and it may be more about societal change than NHRA ineptitude, anyway.
Couple more thoughts - I was too young to have been a part of what I consider the golden era of drag racing, back in the tire smoking 230 mph FED era. I would rather watch a 1320 foot long smoking the whole way 215 mph run than the current 320 mph/1000 foot racing. It is now too fast to appreciate or even see much driving. Back in 1965 the driver could be seen working the car the entire run, and it was slow enough that a normal person could see what was going on. You need the metabolism of a hummingbird to process the data overload of a modern fuel run!
There were 200,000,000 in the USA around 1965. Our population now is 300,000,000, an increase of 50%. It's too bad the total number of operating dragstrips in 2012 is perhaps less than half of 1965.
-90% jimmy
What's to learn if you already know everything?
NHRA is more interested in extracting an ever bigger portion from a pie they themselves are shrinking. Crony Capitalism as practiced by a not for profit corporation. As long as the people at the top are satisfied with their personal earnings, why should they care about growing the sport?
Ahhh, for a modern day Larry Carrier or Jim Tice to give NHRA the competition they need to get on the ball. They've been on Peter Principal auto-pilot for over 20 years now and it works for them, so why should they care about the state of modern drag racing?
It is unfortunate they seem to be getting their greedy little hands all over nostalgia nitro racing. That entire community was borne from all those that still liked nitro, but wanted the "three guys with good jobs" Goodguys paradigm, instead of dedicating their lives in servitude of muiti-million dollar budgets and corporate sponsors just to go out there.
But, consider the source here. I've been a knee jerk NHRA basher for a long time, now, and it may be more about societal change than NHRA ineptitude, anyway.
Couple more thoughts - I was too young to have been a part of what I consider the golden era of drag racing, back in the tire smoking 230 mph FED era. I would rather watch a 1320 foot long smoking the whole way 215 mph run than the current 320 mph/1000 foot racing. It is now too fast to appreciate or even see much driving. Back in 1965 the driver could be seen working the car the entire run, and it was slow enough that a normal person could see what was going on. You need the metabolism of a hummingbird to process the data overload of a modern fuel run!
There were 200,000,000 in the USA around 1965. Our population now is 300,000,000, an increase of 50%. It's too bad the total number of operating dragstrips in 2012 is perhaps less than half of 1965.
-90% jimmy
