D.I. COLUMNIST
Straight Talk
By Ian Tocher
B
ig-league drag rac-
ing has a problem. More
specifically, NHRA has a
problem. While on-track
participation remains pretty strong
overall and certain segments of the
sport are even growing in numbers
and stature, that trend unfortu-
nately doesn’t extend to the highest,
most visible end of the drag racing
spectrum: the NHRA pro classes
favored by national-event fans and
TV viewers.
Most publicly, the NHRA’s long-
running Pro Stock class appears to
be on life support. After years of
insisting all was well, the sanction-
ing body’s powers that be are finally
acknowledging its naturally aspi-
rated patient needs intervention—
stat! The first tangible indication
of concern came back in July 2015,
shortly after Peter Clifford took over
the presidency at Glendora. Liter-
ally within days of Clifford’s ascen-
sion, and effective immediately at
the time, NHRA initiated some Pro
Stock window dressing, including
backing the cars into their pits to
better accommodate fans’ view-
ing, crew members no longer being
permitted to hold the cars in place
during burnouts and requiring a
manufacturer label across the top
of windshields.
More significantly, though, at
the same time NHRA announced
that coinciding with the start of the
2016 season—allowing only seven
months development time, the bulk
of which took place within a packed
racing schedule—in addition to re-
quiring a new 10,500-RPM engine
rev limiter, electronic fuel injection
would finally be mandated for its
“factory hot rod” class. The organiza-
tion also decreed the elimination of
Pro Stock’s trademark giant hood
scoops, as well as shorter wheelie
bars with the intention of creating
more exciting wheels-up launches off
the line. It took some getting used to
(they still don’t look like Pro Stock
cars to me), and the teams adapted
and coped with varying degrees
of success.
With so little lead time and the
expense inevitably associated with
making so many changes at once
(not to mention dealing with a new
tire compound), it was a major un-
dertaking even for the
top teams—KB Rac-
ing, Elite Motorsports
and Gray Motorsports,
which collectively ac-
count for the horsepow-
er in more than half of
each Pro Stock field—to
get up to speed in time.
Regrettably, Ford is long
missing from the Pro Stock ranks,
but top Chevrolet tuners were even-
tually able to find the sweet spot
within the rpm range while the
Mopar teams languished all season
long with engines that ideally prefer
a few more hundred RPMs to get
the job done.
Case in point, piloting a Chevy
for team owner Richard Freeman,
in 2014 Elite driver Erica Enders-
Stevens became the first female Pro
Stock world champion in history and
then repeated the feat in 2015. Trou-
ble was, Freeman suffered the bad
timing of committing to Dodge for
2016 and instead of Enders-Stevens
basking in well-deserved accolades
as the two-time reigning champion
at each stop along the way, she in-
stead suffered the embarrassment of
multiple DNQs and early exits from
eliminations throughout a winless
season. Not surprisingly she’s back
in a Bowtie this year and already has
a win and a couple of runner-up fin-
ishes, underscoring the inherent ad-
vantage that has practically turned
Pro Stock into a Chevrolet spec show.
Not much need for those “Camaro”
decals on the windshields these days;
they’re almost all the same.
But look, I get it. For years NHRA
had endured intense criticism from
fans, media and even a certain Pro
Stock legend for stubbornly sticking
with carburetors in the class despite
their absence since 1990 from pro-
duction vehicles made in America. It
really was a bit of an embarrassment
that the so-called factory hot rods
used such an antiquated induction
system. So it was a long overdue
change, but I can’t help but believe
the rapid implementation had as
much to do with Clifford putting
his leadership stamp on the NHRA
as it did with improving the Pro
Stock product.
While that last point admittedly
remains open to debate, there’s no
question NHRA Pro
Stock is having a diffi-
cult time in 2017 with
short fields the norm
and not the exception
thanks to the obvious
struggles of “little guys”
to make drastic and
rapid—read: expen-
sive—changes to their
Pro Stock programs.
Consider, 10 years ago the season-
opening Winternationals at Pomona
attracted 23 Pro Stock entries and
by May that number had climbed to
28 for the Southernationals in At-
lanta and 33 cars made qualifying
attempts for the 2007 U.S. Nation-
als at Indianapolis. By comparison,
17 cars were on hand this year at
Pomona, 16 made it to the South-
ernats and I’m pretty sure it’s a safe
bet there won’t be anywhere near 30
entries for Indy this Septe mber and
probably not even 20 (there were
19 Pro Stock entries for the Big Go
last year). Low points for Pro Stock
participation in the first half of this
season came at Houston and Bris-
tol, where each brought in only 13
entries, while several other national
events in 2017 have fallen short by
one or two of full 16-car fields.
Obviously this is a big problem
for NHRA, enough so that the or-
ganization recently floated the idea
of reducing the Pro Stock schedule
from 24 to 18 races per year in order
to reduce expenses and encourage
more teams to make a full-season
commitment. But is it a full season
at that point? Will sponsors see it
that way or will it become even more
difficult to convince them to sup-
port a team and class that makes
only 18 TV appearances a year? Per-
haps the bigger question is, would
eliminating six races from the Pro
Stock schedule even help with class
participation? Despite being likely
to see a proportionate cut in their
sponsorship dollars, the big three
probably would continue to run the
full circuit, but could an abbreviated
schedule actually make it even more
difficult for the small, independent
teams to secure what limited back-
ing they currently enjoy? I really
don’t think it’s a given that partici-
pation will increase.
There’s also talk of incorporating
the IHRA-bred, now PDRA-led
mountain-motor Pro Stock class
into NHRA competition to bol-
ster the ranks, the thinking being
that through adding weight to the
900-cubic-inches-plus mountain-
motor cars, their quarter-mile per-
formance can be equalized with the
500-cubic-inch NHRA Pro Stockers.
Forgive my skepticism, but who re-
ally thinks NHRA can handle an-
other heads-up class where they’re
trying to placate high-performance
egos racing disparate engine com-
bos? The infighting would be epic.
Seriously, I fear mixing the two Pro
Stock combos together would merely
hasten the demise of both.
Still others suggest the current
NHRA Pro Stock template should
be discarded altogether and replaced
with some sort of Factory Stock deal,
elevating that class to pro status and
allowing recognizable Mustangs and
Camaros and Challengers to run free
and fast to the delight of packed
stands of spectators. To paraphrase
Field of Dreams: “If you promote
it, they will come.” I’m not so sure.
No, if NHRA wants to fix the cur-
rent Pro Stock situation I think they
have to look at their show as a whole.
And like it or not, it’s going to cost
them. Even Pro Stock diehards (or at
least the honest ones), recognize the
two nitro classes are the show, but
they are indisputably struggling for
participation, too. Far too often, just
like Pro Stock, Top Fuel and Funny
Car are racing with short fields when
those not named Force or Schum-
acher or Kalitta fail to show up, typi-
cally because of money constraints.
So take steps to help them, NHRA,
by reducing the number of events
for everyone and not just one scape-
goat class. Save money for the fuel
teams that are struggling to keep
up, too. Then go the required step
further by issuing a looooonnnnnggg
overdue purse increase for all pro
classes, concentrating on first-round
money to encourage the lower-fund-
ed teams to show up knowing their
weekend won’t be a complete bust
if they can at least qualify. Yes, the
KBs and Kalittas will probably con-
tinue winning the Wallys and the
big bucks, but the little guys will be
more likely to return and make drag
racing whole again.
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