Bob Gilbertson, drive of the Autolite-backed Fuel Funny Car
 Linda Brock Photo |
Bob Gilbertson wondered, “Who is this guy, Eddy Hartenstein? I don’t know the man, but here’s what I’m thinking - how could it be any worse? Big, huge corporations buy companies and the first thing they look at is… we are paying this guy WHAT? What does he do? And then they are gone and they bring in new ideas and new things – so I think it’s a good thing. We’ve had the same group of people running this (NHRA) for many, many years, so I’m thinking some new ideas will be better.
Gilbertson continued, “I raced in Canada two times this year and they are absolutely phenomenal fans that spend and have more money than we do down here. So, I think going to Canada, going to Mexico, is not such a bad thing. It’s new markets. The next level is they need to look out for these teams and help with sponsorships, a lot more than what they (NHRA) are doing. Independents like Wilkerson and me, hey, we need a little help, it’s a good show but we need more money.”
Jim Head, privateer Fuel Funny Car racer
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Todd Dziadosz Photo
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Jim Head saw the next level as, “More sponsors for race teams.” I asked if NHRA needed to give him more help and Head said, “No, they need to get out of the way. My biggest problem is NHRA taking all the money from sponsors. There’s a lot of money around here but none of it is filtering down to the racers. As long as dumb asses like me keep coming out here on our own nickel I guess they’ll keep taking advantage of dumb asses like me, but I love drag racing and they don’t."
Jack Beckman, driver of Don Schumacher
MTS-sponsored Fuel Funny Car
 Todd Dziadosz photo |
Jack Beckman said, “We need to do like NASCAR did a lot of years ago - NHRA needs to push the personalities, not the cars ‘cause the cars sell themselves, the 8,000 horsepower. People that are the mechanics and the technophiles are going to come out and see the cars, but we need to reach out beyond that group of people. We need to get people who come out and are attracted to personalities and want to see their driver do good. Why does somebody root for the Oakland A’s when they live in Denver? They just identify with a personality at some point on that team.
“So, you need to take money to market us to the mass-market. Tap into the television coverage. And we need to expose more people to what we are about, not only on the NHRA (TV) program, but to get them out live to the races. Once you get them to the races you can’t lose them, they have a positive experience out here, which means we need to make it easy to follow all twelve categories. Add more of the Motel 6 Visions screens with interactive scoreboards like at Vegas casinos where they do this. It’s hard to sit in the stands and not hear the PA all the time over the cars, which is good, but if we had them (spectators) getting a continual education all through the day with scoreboards and continual PA announcements and interactive systems, I think they could feel like they can follow along better and they’d be more hyped-up and want to come back. Oh, and free hot dogs for everybody!”
