D R AG ILLUS TR ATED RO UNDTA BL E
PHOTOS: VAN ABERNETHY, DRAG ILLUSTRATED ARCHIVES
the right people in place to verify product and
placement. I’ve said for years, and I don’t know
why it hasn’t been adopted, but they do the annual
tech inspection – I don’t know why we don’t do
an annual contingency inspection that somebody really spends some time and goes through
each individual car piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit, to
actually verify that you’ve got all the right stuff
like once a year. It would speed things up and
make sure the guys getting paid have the right
products and are playing by the rules. I don’t
see a disadvantage.
MB: That’s one thing where class racing
doesn’t have the value that it once had because
the contingency list has gotten smaller and
smaller over the years. If you take a look at it,
NHRA contingency postings are lower now than
where IHRA was when I started out with them
around 2003. Where are they going to be 10 years
from now? Are they providing the value for the
contingency sponsor?
At all the big-money bracket races, they’ve gone
a different route. Contingency all goes to winner
and runner up, whereas at big money bracket
races it’s typically not cash out of the sponsor’s
pocket, but rather typically product that we’re
awarding for best losing package or even pulling
a tech card and somebody gets something other
than just the winner and runner-up. We spread
it around. I think the round prize deal probably
originated with Dave Szerlag and Mike Fuqua
with their JEGS US Open Series that they used
to do. I think they really set the bar. Sincerest
form of flattery, everybody saw a really good idea.
We’ve all copied it. Going back to how many big
money races there are these days, I’m sure the
sponsors are going to start getting tapped out on
June 2016
how much they can do, but so far, so good. I was
just at the No-Box Nationals at Lyons Raceway
Park in Indiana and I had a semi and a quarter so
I paid for the weekend financially. I didn’t have a
final round, but I also came home with three gift
certificates for various things. That product stuff
adds up. Anything that you don’t have to buy out
of pocket is just about as good as cash.
LOOSE ROCKER Michael Beard assesses the state
of Sportsman racing from the standpoint of the
racer and the promotor. He attributes the rising
car counts at big-money bracket races partially to
the unique prize offerings at many of the races.
KS: When you win a national event, let’s say in
2016, in one of the sportsman classes, with contingencies you’re going to win $8,000 to $10,000.
Three to four years ago, that number was almost
double. You probably won $14,000 to $15,000. I
think manufacturers aren’t getting enough ROI
so they decided to pull out from being a contingency sponsor for obvious reasons. The dollars
and cents just aren’t adding up. Let’s just say
they have to do $4,000 or $5,000 in sales to be
able to break even for that program per event.
Well from what I understand, they’re probably
doing half that. It’s just not feasible for a lot of
manufacturers to do that any longer. The check
you get from NHRA is typically $1,500 to $2,000.
A majority of your winnings always came from
your contingency sponsors. Now you’re getting
half the amount that you used to.
From a promoter’s perspective, we have a lot
of manufacturers turning to us, wanting to get
involved with our races because they want to
get into different venues that
they haven’t hit on before.
We’ve had a lot of manufacturers show up at our events
because they’re trying different things.
I’m not sure what the
answer is. NHRA has been
proactive. They have a program now to where there’s
no type of money needed to
be able to be a sponsor. You
basically talk to NHRA and
they will approve you to be
able to pay on a contingency
basis without having to pay
the money upfront. That’s
very proactive, but it hasn’t
made a huge difference either, so I’m not sure what the answer is.
What is the biggest problem facing sportsman racing right now?
SL: The hardest thing about it is continuing
to race. It comes down to money. A lot of the
sportsman racers have successful businesses or
family businesses. The amount of people you see
out there racing today doing it professionally is
a lot less than it was back in the day. I firmly
believe that it’s due to payout. Way back when,
obviously, the cost of living was cheaper, racing
was cheaper, and parts were cheaper. With the
rising cost of being able to keep up with your cars,
the maintenance, buying new equipment and all
of that, it just makes it difficult to continue to race.
We’re going to need to see some purse increases
on the NHRA sportsman level. The bracket races
show that if you put the money up, the racers are
going to come. I’d also like to see NHRA provide
a few more incentives for the next generation of
racers, the kids in Junior Dragsters.
TJ: I think it’s entries and quotas. I think they
need to expand the quotas and build some more
incentive to sportsman racing. They’ve done a
great job of putting marketing around it. They do
the whole post-win parade and interview. Doing
a better job educating fans on sportsman racing
would be big, too. We need to let fans and young
people know they could literally take their street
car out to their local drag strip and get involved
as a racer immediately. You can’t do that in any
other motorsport; you can’t paint a number on
your minivan and pull onto a dirt oval. I think
that’s cool.
LB: Cost. You could argue it a couple of differ-
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