Changes need to be made but what changes?

I think everyone would whole heartedly agree that June 21st was a terribly sad day for the sport of drag racing with the untimely death of funny car driver Scott Kalitta. He is the second funny car driver in just over a year to die suddenly in his race car. The carnage just can't continue and everyone agrees that changes need to come in order to protect the drivers and the sport itself. But what changes?

Since that fateful day, there has been a lot written on the internet, in National Dragster and discussed elsewhere. NHRA has instituted an interim measure of shortening the racetrack for fuel cars to 1000 feet but this is only a temporary band aid to the problem.

Drag racers, being the breed we are, will always try to go quicker and faster within the rules. It's what makes us drag racers to begin with. That is a constant that will never change. In light of this, I think the sanctioning bodies need to consider the specifications of the cars rather than the length of the race track. Quarter mile race track have been the staple of the sport since it's inception and the general public has enough problems understanding our sport without making it even more complicated for them. The root of the problem is speed and these cars need to be slowed down. If they can't run as fast then there no longer is an issue with the length of shut down areas at all of the national event tracks.

In order to slow these cars down, it could be approached from several different ways. One is by adding weight, however adding weight without reducing the horsepower of the cars would complicate the issue and make the cars even more dangerous.  This potential solution would put much more stress and strain of the chassis that are already pushed to the limits. Reducing the amount of down force by reducing the size and designs of rear wings  is an opinion. Again, I think this is a dangerous option as these cars need the stability of that down force to keep them from going airborne or skating.

In my opinion, I think the answer to horsepower reduction is to restrict the cars to a single fuel pump at a specified maximum output volume and the use of only one magnito. Dropped cylinders and massive engine explosions occur when so much fuel is being pumped into the cylinders that they just can't be lit by the spark and the cylinder hydraulics causing a major explosion because of course you can't compress a liquid. At the same time, I would like to see the nitro percentage cut to 50% with methanol as the only allowed additive for the other 50%.

With these proposed changes, Top Fuel cars would run in the 5.20s or 5.30s and Funny Cars in the 5.40s and 5.50s while keeping speeds in the 270 mph range. Yes, they would slow down but so what? The show would probably be better, the racing would be tighter and there would still be the cackle of nitro and yellow flames at night which is what draws the fans. Seeing that these would be mandated changes, I would think that the race teams would applaud them as it would only reduce their expenses and reduce the carnage of both parts and drivers. Gee, if the expenses were reduced, maybe we would see larger fields. Drag racers being who they are, it would not surprise me a bit if they were running 5.00s in no time with this set up.

Anyway...that's what I think...what do you think?

June 7, 2008

Isn't it about time to stand up and shout "No More"?

I think every drag racer and every drag racing fan on the planet is following the nitromethane situation as it affects the sport of drag racing. There is a world wide shortage and it appears that most of the supply originates in China. As both a racer and a spectator, I have a ton of questions and what I would hope would be food for thought for the rest of you.

1.) Anyone in any sort of business knows that you never, ever, limit your supply chain to a single source of supply. NHRA's decision to do this was strictly made in order for them to make more profit from the sole source supplier at everyone else's expense. What idiot made this decision?

2.) It was reported that Angus Chemical / Dow ceased US production of nitromethane, after the Texas plant fire, because it was not profitable. In actuality, it's not that producing nitromethane is the US wasn't profitable, it's that buying it from China was much more profitable. The price never came down, only the profits went up.

3.) With a world wide shortage and a selling price of $35 a gallon, why don't those with the resources start a US production facility. It's not as if they couldn't sell the production.  Nitromethane is not that difficult to produce. CH₃NO₂ is produced by the reaction of sodium chloroacetate with sodium nitrite in an aqueous solution. Nitromethane is distilled from the reaction and then dried over a mild desiccant.

This whole situation angers me to no end. Profits come before common sense. As a country, we are supporting a communist nation that manufactures product with little or no regard for quality, human rights or the use of forced and child labor. As a racer, I don't want inferior quality Chinese products on my race car or on my body as safety equipment. Do you?

At the beginning of last year, I bought a new Simpson helmet from Jegs. When I presented the helmet for the first time for an NHRA tech inspection, there it was bigger than day under the lining, "Made in China". I almost fell over. The equivalent helmet from Impact Racing which is made in Indianapolis is roughly the same price. That means that the difference is strictly profit that goes into Simpson's pocket at the expense of the racer.

Isn't it about time that we as racers say enough is enough? Isn't it about time that the sanctioning bodies not allow Chinese safety equipment and fuel? Where are all of those Chinese drag strips anyway where their factory reps hang out to know what we need from their products?  Do you want a crankshaft in your race car that was made by a 14 year old girl in a sweatshop? I don't. The only real power we have as racers is where and how we spend our money. If we spend so much energy supporting those companies that support drag racing, shouldn't we also spend an equal amount of energy supporting our own country?

April 27, 2008

What are we doing wrong? Something just isn't right.

Today being Sunday, I sat down to read the Tampa Tribune just like I do most Sundays. The sports section is 16 full pages and it's chock full of baseball, football, golf, horse racing, hockey, fishing, dog racing, lacrosse, rowing, car ads, tire ads, golf country club ads and of course our favorite, massage parlor ads. Granted, within the 16 pages, 1-1/3 of them were dedicated to NASCAR, however, this weekend the NHRA Southern Nationals are being contested in Commerce, Georgia at Atlanta Dragway. This race which draws 100,000 plus spectators only warranted a single sentence on page 6 compared to the article about the Plant High rowing team who reached the state finals which received a whopping three paragraphs. Congrats to them for the feat, I don't want to rain on their parade for their accomplishment however, the race was much larger and deserved more coverage.

What is our sport doing wrong? Our stars don't do steroids, there is no physical violence, we don't hurt or abuse animals and even Richard Childress and Kevin Harvick are getting behind a new Top Fuel dragster team under the Rob Vandergriff umbrella because drag racing offers so much spectator potential as a sport. We have major corporate backing with the likes of Coca Cola, UPS, DHL, Anheuser Busch etc.. Husbands and wives are running each other in competition as well as fathers racing their sons and daughters. Talk about drama. Where else can you go to see 8000 horsepower, fire breathing 330 mph cars? For goodness sake, drag racing is the largest participant motorsport in the country with NHRA alone having 150,000 plus members, several hundred drag strips and we get almost weekly ESPN race coverage. It's not peanuts, so why can't we receive some respectable newspaper coverage. This just totally baffles me to no end.

Is it NHRA's fault because they can't properly communicate with the mainstream media? Is it the fault of track managers who don't communicate with local media? Is it our fault as racers that we don't pound the media on a regular basis for coverage? Or is it the fact that the mainstream media just isn't informed enough about the sport to report on it because they still view our sport as a bunch of greasy hoodlums that street race?

Whatever it is, I think we deserve more in depth coverage than a high school rowing team. Oh, by the way, what about Friday night's results from Sunshine? I couldn't go because I was pulling a motor.

Let me know what you think. Cick here

Has the time come for us to be re-started? Food for thought...

For many, many, years now, all drag races have been started utilizing the "Christmas Tree" with either a .400 Pro start (all yellows flash then .400 of a second later the green light)  or a staggered .500 start (top yellow, .500 seconds, middle yellow, .500 seconds, bottom yellow, .500 seconds then green). If you leave before the green you get a red light and automatic disqualification.

This system has worked for over 40 years but the question is, Are we ready for a change? If you watch the Pros race on ESPN, you see a large number of red light starts especially in Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle. We also see a large number of red lights in Super Gas, Super Comp, Comp and bracket racing. This in itself is not good for our sport if we are trying to attract and keep spectators. Red light starts, just like Pros smoking the tires, are so anti-climactic that they tend to bore the spectators that we work so hard at to get into the stands to begin with. It's counter productive to the sport's efforts at growth.

A couple years ago there was a movement out west to switch the starting system to an instant green start, however it just seemed to disappear. Why? No matter what class you would run, when you're supposed to start, all you get is the flash of the green bulbs and nothing else . Green..go. That's it. The big yellow bulbs on the tree would be swapped out for green ones and they would all flash together. Green. Red lights would be totally eliminated except for those racers whose brains just fall out of their cranial cavities into their laps by leaving before the tree is activated. Don't laugh too hard, I've put mine back in a couple times in my lifetime like at the recent Gatornationals. Yes, it's incredibly embarrassing.

What is happening  is today's vehicles are capable of leaving so hard and fast, that it's becoming ever so much more difficult to slow down the total reaction time to go green. Total Reaction Time = Vehicle Reaction Time + Driver Reaction Time. Typical Driver Reaction time is in the .250 second range.

In the case of the Pros with an instant green system, red lights would be totally eliminated. For sportsman racers they would be drastically reduced and would totally eliminate the need for Cross Talk and Cross Talk delay boxes, which is just another way to loose if wrong numbers are input or the other guy changes his dial in at the last second. The later is a huge problem with racers who use electronic dial in boards. With track owners developing new sportsman heads up classes to bring more spectators in, just maybe, this would make it that much more interesting and exciting for them.

Tell me what you think.

April 2, 2008

John Force Buys Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, OH

 Not !!

Question....

But what if he did? Would it be good for Drag Racing ?

You may or may not have seen the April Fool's joke on the NHRA website yesterday claiming that Force bought the track at Norwalk. Of course it isn't true but it does get you to think, gee, what if he did? If he did, would it be for the betterment of the sport? Of course this is all hypothetical but in my opinion this could be a double edged sword. There is no better person in the sport than John Force. He is beyond a doubt a pro's pro. He has the where with all, the ability to manage, the access to the best people in the industry and he is without question the largest fan draw in the sport. All of theses are such huge positives that it's hard to ask the question. In the long run could it good for the sport?

There are two very big questions that this scenario raises. Is there a potential conflict of interest because he is an active racer and team owner in the same sport? I have such mixed emotions about this that I'm not going to answer the question only ask it. Is it ethical for a racer to compete at his own track?

The second huge question, is Force too close to NHRA to be impartial and independent? Without  a question, he has probably the strongest ties to NHRA of anyone outside of NHRA. Could he make his decisions independent of the sanctioning body for the betterment of the sport even if it's not for the betterment of NHRA? It's possible. Even though NHRA wrote the article as a prank, it is so possible and actually very viable if approached properly. If not Force maybe Don Prudohmme or Don Schumacher?

I would love nothing better than to see John Force go the way of Bruton Smith and do wonderful things with this and other racing facilities around the country. He understands racing and race fans. I think he has an excellent grasp of what it takes to do well. I guess only time will tell.  It would be the perfect way for him to retire from driving and continue to build on his influence in the sport and provide for his family. Drop me a note with your thoughts.