A strong NHRA hasn't varied in 60 years, since back when Wally started the whole thing. It's built on a strong sportsman program supported by a healthy ecosystem of performance parts suppliers, with a clear path from the sportsman ranks all the way to the pros.
A strong sportsman program creates interest among hundreds of thousands, from the people who actually race, through their many friends and families, to the people who just love a fun day watching local people race for a cheap ticket. Those people will attend the national circus when it comes to town, not to worry.
It also builds a robust performance industry that has a rich market for their parts, a great test bed for new ideas, and a platform to build parts for OEMs. And many of those firms will be healthy enough to sponsor pros, and budding pros.
And a strong sportsman program provides a stepping stone for the pros. There needs to be a clear path from local bracket racer to top fuel, if you have the skills, desire, and passion for it. Just as in nearly every other sport, there needs to be a way to spend time at each rung on the ladder and see clearly what the next rung is.
All that said, if I was in charge of NHRA national events, I would put the focus squarely on that stepping stone. We are the only sport in the world where the pros and the amateurs compete on the exact same field of play, on the same day, in front of the same crowd. We don't do nearly enough to leverage that.
I'd like to see that clearly played out. Today the ladder is nitro, pro stock (car and bike), alky, and ... A bunch of random stuff (SC, SG, SST, STK, COMP, ...). No one understands any of that stuff, and it doesn't build the "I get it, these are the AAA teams..." in the minds of the fans. Worse, it doesn't say "hey, I could do that!", and build future sportsman racer interest.
Today, the missing rungs are ProMod, and TD/TS. They are clearly the next rungs in the ladders. And people can get TD & TS if you explain them. Save all the other stuff for divisional competition. (Note, we race in SC and I still believe this.). So a national event is TF, FC, PS (PB), PM, TAD, TAFC, COMP(?), TD, TS. All fast cars, all easy to understand, all build one to the next (eg, TD:6s, TAD:5s, FC:4s, TF:3s)
The other thing is, don't start the Sunday show with your best cars. Build up to it. Run the semis of the slower cars, then build up to round one of TF. By the time I've seen a TD do 210, then a TAD do 255, I'll be itching to see someone do 300+. The first cars are loud, the alky cars are really loud, the nitro cars are off the chart. The way it is today, there's no way even a 5sec, 260mph TAD isn't a let down.
Then clearly put some time, energy, and love back in the divisional series. Celebrate the heck out of them. With promos all over the web, with $$ for the local tracks to promote them, and so on. Maybe have those series build to regional championships, followed by a big national championship event -- the day before the pro finals maybe??
The whole focus today is upside down. We say that people only want nitro because that's what we feed them. We (for some reason) think people would rather have some idiot shoot t-shirts at them rather than watch a cool video about how to get started in the sportsman ranks, or how bracket racing works. If we built and celebrated the sportsman program better, people would love it too.
So that's what I think a strong NHRA is, just like what Wally thought it was: a bunch of people with passion for cars, racing them safely, supported by really strong performance parts companies, and celebrated with a few (I agree: 10-12) big national events.
Chris
