I really don't understand the obsession with wheels up launches in Pro Stock. Watching some of these old videos from back in the late 70's to early 80's shows the cars weren't getting much more than 6 inches off the ground. People aren't piling into the stands to watch bumper dragging Super Stocks. Heck they don't even hang around to watch Pro Mod. I think Pro Stock lost it's way when they started using the FWD to RWD conversion with cars like Beretta's, Probe's, Cutlass', and Daytona's. I can't remember a whole lot of people wanting to see a Ford Probe race an Oldsmobile Cutlass, but they did want to see Bob Glidden race Warren Johnson. Add in the growing interest by the brands to go with Fuel Injection and the great divide kinda has it's roots. Some started loosing interest in big block carbureted V8's stuffed into mid-sized FWD replicas, and the brands weren't interested in further developing carbs anymore. The class still had a lot of momentum from diehard fans with the legendary names; so it held value with sponsors in terms of ROI. I still feel NHRA has done more harm than good to Pro Stock in the past 15-20 years. Most of it was they quit promoting it. Instead they jumped on the John Force runaway freight train with both feet. On top of his on track success Force has proven to be a great salesman and legendary persona for NHRA. But at the same time Glendora could've at least made an effort to remind people there was more to NHRA Drag Racing than the travelling John Force Road Show. In 4 years Pro Stock will be celebrating it's 50th Anniversary, if it's even around by 2020. It'll be interesting to see if NHRA puts as much effort into recognizing the drivers and cars like they're doing this year with the 50th Anniversary of Funny Cars.
Pro Stock is drawing great ire from a few journalists as well as many fans. I don't recall anyone calling for an end of the class when Bob Glidden was dominating, or when Reher Morrison Shepherd won their 4 consecutive Championships. Would folks be calling for an end to the class if Erica and Jeggie were winning like Jason and Greg are? Maybe, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be as loud. This season looks bad in a number of ways. First of which they haven't even completed a full year with Fuel Injection. Most teams have only had about 8 months with it. A far cry from 46 years of carburetors. Another factor is Elite Motorsports made a huge switch from Chevrolet to Dodge. That takes time to work out on top of going to F.I. Car counts are low, but in all honesty they've been trending downwards for the past few years. Even Top Fuel and Funny Car are seeing short fields. The cars have evolved to a form of likeness. Which makes it difficult to find appealing. Maybe once the class has regained some solid footing they can start to bring dimensions back in step with the production line models. Pro Stock has turned into a wealthy mans hobby. Very few real sponsors actually remain in NHRA let alone Pro Stock. All the legendary names that fans around my age grew up on have left for one reason or another. How do you fix that? Unless you've got millions to burn it's unlikely we'll see names like Glidden and Johnson return anytime soon. Warren and Kurt Johnson are still involved building engines as does Reher Morrison, and Frank Iaconio. There's Bill Glidden racing in Pro Mod, but outside of that nobody else remains active. Do you sit back and blame teams like KB Racing for finding the "unfair advantage"? I don't understand why anyone would do that. It's not like Greg or Jason did anything that Glidden, Johnson, Iaconio, RMS, or any other major player in the Pro Stock game would've done.