Don’t Kill the Goose
03/08/07
There seems to be a real love/hate relationship many racers and former racers have with the National Hot Rod Association. A love/hate relationship is defined as when people have completely lost the intimacy within a loving relationship, yet still retain some passion for, or perhaps some commitment to each other. It’s pretty clear that the current NHRA is not your father’s NHRA. What we have now is a more polished sports marketing firm, one that could easily have other clients if key members were added to the staff in Glendora.
The only link to what might be considered the Golden Days of drag racing and today’s sanctioning body is Wally Parks and the Museum at Pomona. There are dozens of websites dedicated to recollections of those Golden Days; jogging memories of what is remembered as a time much better than today’s T-shirt shooting, POWERade-branded entertainment excitement. No doubt, spectators and fans come for excitement.
What concerns me is something I’ve coined the ego-sponsorship. What we’ve got now in the highest levels of drag racing is very-rich to super-rich patrons of the art of speed with very few real, mainstream sponsors that have not been sucked up first by the sanctioning body. I know we’ve all seen the plethora of mainstream, non-automotive products on the sides of NASCAR NEXTEL Cup cars. One of the really long-running sponsors has been
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From an era of basically homemade racecars that you and your friends invested your time, welding skills, modified parts and backyard ingenuity to compete at the top levels of the sport, we’ve now got a sport that is way too expensive to sustain and absolutely impossible for the average guy to do anything but watch. Drag racing has evolved into a high-dollar parts ordering system of higher technology, supplied by one high-tech innovator or another.
Let’s go down a short list to show how precarious our sport really is.
Connie Kalitta usually has one-quarter of the Top Fuel field at any event, as Don Prudhomme once said, “Connie has more money than God.” It’s rather doubtful he needs Strivectin or Zantrex to compete. Thank God we have the Kalittas - Conrad, Scott and Doug.
David Powers is another very rich man. Another former drag racer that now has two “under-sponsored” and super competitive Top Fuel dragsters. Rod Fuller leads the Top Fuel points at this point in the season with a severely under-sponsored race team.
Has anyone ever seen a Skull Gear shirt on anyone but a team member of an Evan Knoll-sponsored racing effort? Have you ever waxed your car with Skull Shine or have you ever seen it on display on the shelves at the local CSK or NAPA store? What would NHRA drag racing be without a generous benefactor like Knoll, who fortunately didn’t take up NASCAR as his hobby - this time. But what happens when that well runs dry? We lose three to six under-sponsored teams subject to the whims of a very rich dude and his advisors.
