Which of their rules have been most effective in slowing the cars down?
CK: The rev limiter does it. It's in play. That's why I'm so much against this 85%. It's unbelievable. It's easier to make a good smooth horsepower with 90 percent nitro in the tank instead of 85 because the 85-percent combination is like setting a bomb off inside the engine. It's going to blow up and it does. We can take you down to the engine shop and show you two that we trashed out over the weekend.
Where does Dan Olson stand on this issue?
CK: Dan has been a crew chief so he understands the mechanical side of it. He's all for it. Like I said, we had a survey that was over 60%. I thought it would be closer to 90%, but it wasn't. I can't depend on Kenny (Bernstein) to take another one because of so many other things going on in the PRO organization. I'm going to go there again.
What about the tire issue? Do we have a good tire?
CK: We've got a good tire now. In the past we had tires with problems. The way the tires were working was compromising the structural integrity of it. Now, Darrell Russell, he was in harm's way, a piece of rubber coming off that tire and going through a hole that big and hitting the back of the helmet like that, the velocity that it was traveling…the odds of that happening are pretty long. But we had all seen the damage to the tires and we should have stopped it, NHRA should have stopped it, the racers should have stopped using that tire. At the time, when the tire was out there, they (NHRA) mandated that that was the only tire you could run, they shoved it down our throats.
The management at Goodyear didn't even know there was a problem. The engineers never kept management in tune with what was going on. They never said, We've got a problem. Kenny (Bernstein) had communications with the guy there (Goodyear Tire and Rubber) that is second in command right after this (Darrell Russell’s death) happened. He (Goodyear rep) got involved, and I mean he was on top of it. A lot of stuff happened when he became aware of what was going on and what they had.
What is the tire situation today with the new tire that you say is a good tire? Is the tire issue solved?
CK: Well, yes we have a good tire, but now we have another situation with tire failure and it relates to track prep. You don't get tire damage on a 125-degree race track, or even a 110-degree race track; where the damage comes is on a cold race track, a 70-degree over-prepped race track.
I'll give you a good example. Last Sunday {at Englishtown], they (NHRA) prepped the race track at 8:00 a.m., they sprayed it for 1320 feet. The first round (of eliminations) wasn’t too bad, but I did not see them prep it between the first and second rounds. I was up in one of the hospitality suites watching the Pro Stocks run and I did not see them spray the track.
The racetrack really got ugly and then they elected to spray the racetrack between the second and third rounds. The racetrack got a little better but they were still having problems because the race track got to over 130 degrees. But they are so paranoid and Goodyear is beating up on NHRA about the fact that they (Goodyear) can't have another tire blow out. Well, we've proven this thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: when you have a cool racetrack, you don't want to be taking a hammer to this baby with a 75% VHT mixture, you want to do it 30% or 40% mix of alcohol and traction compound so that it doesn't set up the texture of the rubber on the track well. They (NHRA) are erring on the conservative side.
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I want to talk about the PRO organization. Have the members of PRO had any thoughts or ideas about becoming more like a professional players union or organization like they have in baseball or football? An organization that is more union-like than PRO is currently?
CK: Well, PRO is pretty active. We've actually asked John Force to come back to the board. I do know that some paper work went to him and I believe he will accept it. When he resigned before, John got swayed by other people. He said, These guys called me and said this and that. I put him on the carpet. I said, Who is doing this to you? Well, he didn't want to say. I don’t know if that is just John, you know what he's like, you've been around him. He can take a swing like he's riding a rope in the Tarzan movie. If he does accept that position, I'd really like to see him up there because he can come up with some stuff that is totally different and has a different objective to it. Racing is his livelihood and that's where he's at.
I'm a little bit different from John in that I have two different lives. What I do over here at the airport and my air operations and what I have is totally different.
