At last year’s race I expressed my concerns about the track to Nowling and he told me that by the next season the track was going to do whatever was required to make the track safer for the ADRL cars that were rapidly increasing Top Speeds and lowering their ETs and, as a result, needed a lot of track to get slowed down. Speeds exceeding 205 mph are now not uncommon in the ADRL.

So I committed a Cardinal sin as a reporter and journalist. Instead of taking the track and ADRL president Kenny Nowling to task for racing on a race on a track that was obviously too short for the ADRL’s top two classes, I neither said nor wrote anything. I failed to do my job. I let friendship and the desire not to piss off someone influence my judgment and responsibility as a reporter.

So I’m going to try to fix that in this editorial.

As I write this, David Hagan and Kenny Nowling are having a bitter dispute. There is no doubt that Hagan has a valid written contract through 2009 for an ADRL national event at his track. And it is equally true that the Shelor company has had a relationship with the ADRL where they furnished them with vehicles. Those alone are not good enough reasons to put racers unnecessarily at risk.

I don’t care about contracts written or verbal between Nowling and Hagan. If it means having a race on a track that will put racers in an already dangerous class at even more risk then perhaps they should be renegotiated.  For Hagan and Nowling the safety of the racers that support their track and organization should be -- must be -- their primary concern. Forget about the idiots that believe unnecessary danger is acceptable and a part of drag racings allure.  Try explaining that philosophy to a racer’s wife, children, or parents when something horrible accidently happens.

Think about carrying that burden around with you the rest of your life. And it only has to happen once in your lifetime. I wonder how Mr. Hagan would feel about his son, Matt, racing on an NHRA track in his fuel Funny Car knowing for sure that many drivers had been unable to stop their cars and were either forced to spin the car out or run it off the end of the track. Would he say that is just a risk the driver assumes? Even though the track at Radford has the minimum shutoff required for an eighth-mile track by the IHRA, I doubt the IHRA was figuring on 2600+-lb door cars that could exceed 200 mph in the eighth mile when they set that standard.

David Hagan has a perfect right to be upset with the ADRL. As a track owner, he thought he had a race on the 4th of July. He has supported the ADRL and his immediate reaction was that he was betrayed and abused. Kenny Nowling made a decision he thought he had to in order to give his racers the best and safest track that he could. In order to do that he broke a written contract and that is legally wrong but morally correct.   

I believe in his heart David Hagan has to know that his track is simply too short for the ADRL’s cars. I believe that after last year Nowling knew in his heart that the track wasn’t safe for his series. He should have made it clear to Hagan at the end of that race that he couldn’t/wouldn’t return to the track as it was. He made a judgment error in not doing so. I believe running another race there would have compounded that error.

“The biggest regret I have about this whole deal is that I allowed the race to go on at Radford last year,” Nowling told me.

Where the hell are the insurance companies that we are told are mandating safer tracks and slower cars as a price for getting adequate insurance in this fiasco? This isn’t a money issue. Tickets to an ADRL race are free. Racers aren’t charged to race; their entry is free. Some money is made from parking fees and concessions but it isn’t in the six-figure range, I would bet. Therefore the July 4 race at Radford probably isn’t going to make or break either Motor Mile Dragway or the ADRL.

As I said before, I accept at least partial responsibility here. I should have written about what I witnessed at the track last year and called out both the track and the ADRL … but I didn’t. Kenny Nowling should have gone to David Hagan after the race last year and told him he wasn’t coming back until the track was lengthened. But he didn’t. So, once again, the talk of drag racing isn’t of speed, elapsed times or winning, but rather who is suing whom, who is right or wrong, and it is all playing out on the Internet. If I have re-learned one vital lesson here it is to always stick to my principals when it comes to reporting on a race or a situation regardless of whether I have friends involved or not. This isn’t a hobby, it is my profession.  Ignoring a problem will never make it go away. Right is right, safe is safe and the truth is inescapable!