We’d be burned down by the end of the week-long tour then (too many adult beverages and deadlines and little sleep), but there were almost 30 articles posted up on stock car racing at the end of our efforts. Even some of the news outlets that concentrated on stick & ball sports would send a reporter – once the stock car virus got planted in them, there was another media outlet on board and getting info out about that racing.
Today’s drag racing pre-season news is trailered by comparison. It’s no wonder drag racing and news about it is comatose before the season starts. There is no organized action by the NHRA (or IHRA) to prime the pump. Sure, we have the informal Las Vegas and Phoenix winter tests to get a hodge-podge of team news and people covering it. (The same ones as always.) But there is no formalized, “here’s the unique type of racing we do, here are the top-notch teams, here is racing your readers want to know more about” activity to get the word out about this fantastic sport to the masses.
It spins me up that such a major pre-season opportunity to shout out the merits of drag racing and its teams at the national and local level is being squandered by its major sanctioning bodies. Don’t mistake my commentary here as whining about how hard it is to find something to write about drag racing before the 2007 season. I could get all frothy like some of the online forums about “Mono-Wing Gate” at Phoenix and try to hash up a major
news item from an innovation Don Garlits (“Who’s your Daddy!?) came up with years ago.
I’d like to believe my motives are more respectful of this sport than that. I certainly don’t want the NHRA or IHRA to turn into NASCAR, but I do want them to at least put up a fight for the drivers and dollars and sponsors and eyeballs that the media black-hole of Cup racing is sucking up.
Don’t see any former F1 or Indy car racers coming over to drag racing do you? Or the accompanying media spike and fan interest (and sponsor interest) that generates. Wouldn’t surprise me if a top drag racer/owner went over to Cup racing in the future – the money and media is there. Can you imagine The Snake and a team of his on the Cup schedule? It would take one phone call to Joe Gibbs to help get that rolling. I can imagine this happening and drag racing would be much, much the lesser for it.
What to do? First, get Bruton Smith on board with this drag racing Media Tour idea. His Lowe’s team, headed by unmatched impresario H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler (H.A. = Howard Augustine) knows promotion and plays the media like Charlie Daniels does his fiddle. They are better than any drag racing sanctioning group at mastering this kind of media tour – and getting sponsors and teams to agree to fostering and paying for it.
Maybe Bruton’s Las Vegas track hosts during winter testing there the POWERade / Lucas Oil -- The Strip At Las Vegas Motor Speedway Drag Racing Media Tour. (How could headline writers resist that sponsor-heavy title?) That track has got a crew with major PR skills, too.
Maybe it has to be in Indy in February (brrr!) where plenty of drag racing shops are located.
Maybe put it in Southern Cali (much warmer) where other teams are located and NHRA ground-zero is. Start in Cali and go to The Strip at Las Vegas.
Maybe its first baby-step is to put a couple of media-visits to some of the drag racing shops around the Charlotte, NC, area as an optional part of the Cup media tour. There would be at least 200 media people to entice with all the merits of drag racing.
Have Doug Herbert fire up a fueler in the parking lot of his performance parts store a few miles from Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Take them to nearby Mooresville Dragway and have Greg Anderson and Jason Line drive out the back door of their shop and do a couple of blasts with their Pro Stockers. Get recently retired Jim Oddy to quit lounging around at his new house near Mooresville and host a tech seminar on making mucho HP. Take them down to Roy Hill’s dragster school at Rockingham and make them pee their pants with fear (uh, excitement) in his ride-along car.
I can’t guarantee pre-season carpet-bombing coverage of our sport from a Drag Racing Media tour, but it would be better than what is being done now. Nothing.
