But the lobbying doesn’t come just from racers. Fenn told me about a rear wing manufacturer that called to complain after ORSCA found its product to be about one inch too long on some Limited Street entries. “They even said, ‘What if we offer a contingency program,’” he recalled. “So I told them that’d be great, but their wing still had to be one inch smaller and that’s all I’ve heard.”
Another of the issues Fenn said will be addressed, and soon, is that of certain racers, especially in the 10.5 ranks, insisting on being the last or among the last to go in every qualifying session. At Huntsville, one prominent driver pulled out of line when a slight rain passed through before a qualifying round was completed, then pulled back in at the end of the line after the rain stopped 10 minutes later. I know it aggravated at least three of his peers that night.
"I think it’s more important that each racer has to go out of the right and the left lane than it is to have a set order of who goes out first and who goes out last, but that’s always been a problem,” Fenn acknowledged. However, it’s not as easy to fix as some would think, he added. “We’re working on a run order right now. The problem is you have to make them swap lanes. But if you pull numbers from a hat every round and then you run, you can mess up your right-left, right-left. I mean, what if the next time you draw you get two guys who are supposed to go in the right lane?”
Just pairing up and reversing the run order each round isn’t an option either, he said, because several ORSCA racers don’t want to see qualifying turn into a best-two-out-of-three grudge match. “But I guarantee we’re going to fix that problem; we’ve got to,” Fenn stated. “It’s aggravating everybody and it’s causing conflict between us and our racers. We have to fix it as soon as we can.”
Just the fact that Fenn and ORSCA are considering alternatives to the way they’ve been doing things is a positive sign—I think. I also must confess to a certain amount of skepticism after hearing this kind of talk before, but still seeing the racers dictating what happens—and when—at an ORSCA event.
The Outlaw 10.5 teams in particular were notorious for taking their sweet time after repeatedly being called to the lanes. But that actually improved considerably last year and although still not perfect, if those guys can change their ways, maybe ORSCA can follow their lead.
Race safe,
PS. I don’t fault IHRA for deciding halfway through qualifying last month to run an all-eighth-mile event at San Antonio Raceway when the racing surface started coming apart shortly after that distance on the track. It was a decision made for safety and economics given the sizable expense everyone—IHRA, racers, fans, media—would’ve incurred had the race been postponed. Plus, by most accounts, after some grumbling from competitors and fans, they pulled it off and maybe even opened a few eyes to the feasibility of eighth-mile pro class racing in the future. However, I hope the track operators and crew at San Antonio aren’t basking in the aftermath of a successful event. They should be embarrassed, ashamed even, for presenting an unfit, unsafe playing field, especially since it wasn’t their first time hosting an IHRA national event. This was not an unforeseen circumstance, but an unacceptable failure. In any other major sport a screw-up like that at San Antonio would’ve been major news and a major scandal for those involved. We haven’t heard much since the end of the race, but I hope IHRA and track officials are taking steps to ensure they never embarrass themselves—and the sport—like that again.
