Point is if I owned a drag track, I’d have a lotto based on ticket number and put a Fan Mike in the hands of a drag racing ticket buyer and let them ask questions of the crews and drivers to exploit this unique feature of drag racing. Even if the fan interviewer were tongue-tied and star-struck holding a quivering mike up to their racing hero, that would still show you something you can’t get in any other type of racing.
Diversity
You get arrows in your back when you are a pioneer, but the NHRA has been decades ahead in making drag racing less lilly-white and male than other motorsports. An NHRA national event is a corporate national sales person’s dream come true, and drag racing is the only national racing sport to have real ethnic and gender diversity among its participants and very importantly, among its fans buying on the midway and watching in the stands. This fact should be shouted from the top of the tables in boardrooms across corporate America. Local drag racing should keep following this lead set by the national level and make sure it is supported and developed there.
I got my first encounter with drag racing diversity when I went to an Import Shootout-type drag race event in California a few years back. Buick GNs vs. Mustangs vs. Hondas on the bottle or every performance enhancer known. Two-hundred plus cars and an event that looked like it was populated from Ellis Island. Fantastic.
NASCAR is catching on to this at the national racer level and working on driver development at the roots level, too. But they can only dream about eventually developing someone like Antron Brown achieving what he has on the track and being so well spoken and media-savvy. Also, stock car racing is still a long way behind drag racing when you look at the ethnic composition of the people watching the event and paying their money at the track-trinket trailers. By the way, we should all enshrine Shirley Muldowney for her incredible part in making drag racing more diverse.
Track Action
Drag racing is more closely related to everyday driving than any other motorsports. There is the opportunity for a drag race at every intersection in America. There is not the equivalent for any other motorsports that turns left (or right). I have long told people if you want to see a NASCAR stock car race, then watch it on TV. Unless you get tickets to the Bristol night race. This does not hold for your local stock car racing – that’s worth attending. But if you want to see a NHRA or IHRA drag race – go to it.
There is NOTHING in the motorsports sensory library like the violent tension and bellow and air pressure change and sound and vibration and smell of a fuel car launching and disappearing down a track. I had forgotten just how fast 325-plus MPH really is until reminded at the Southern Nationals – and I’ve been pitside at the Daytona 500, in Turn 3 at the Knoxville Nationals with WoO sprinters a few feet away coming over my right shoulder at full blast , and about 100 ft. away when A.J. Foyt went by at 270-something MPH in the Oldsmobile Aerotech trying to set a closed-course speed record at a test track out near Fort Stockton, TX.
If someone could only develop “Nitro Vision” for your home entertainment center where nitro fumes and rubber tire bits were sprayed on you when the fuelers ran down the screen – the NHRA would never have a TV ratings problem again. Until then, people should be encouraged to spend some quality family time at the drags, and corporate and local sponsors should know that this is a place to reach them for product sales.
An added benefit of this track action is that the development gene pool for drag racing is waiting to be plucked at every high school in the U.S. If I had my way, street driving and drag racing safety indoctrination and Test & Tune races would be offered as part of the curriculum at every high school. Not going to happen, but local track support and national support from Glendora of something like that will keep the crop of new drag racers coming and foster goodwill among the local people. I know first hand how woefully inadequate street driver education is in our country because my son is getting his permit in the next week or two. If you can fog a mirror you can drive a car these days. Stupid, but I’ve veered off-topic, again.
It’s Elemental Racing -- No “Lucky Dog” Passes
In drag racing you are on the clock and it is the “Decider.” Man vs.Time, only one wins. Unless the timing system is puking – which should never be allowed to happen. You have so much time to stage, or you don’t get to run. You get beat in a round, the clock says you can go home no matter how big your name is. There is only one winner and everyone had the same shot at the clock getting to that point. Drag racing is elemental that way.
Other motorsports are not quite so straightforward. For instance at its highest level in Nextel Cup, you have a “Lucky Dog” pass to get back on the lead lap. This is the sort of on-track contrivance that a local track promoter would dream up to entice a crowd, sort of like adding motorized shopping cart races to the bill. (NO emails from the National Association of Shopping Cart Authentic Racers, OK?) But it’s a joke and cheats the sport and fans to have such a rule at a national level race event. Even P.T. Barnum would be embarrassed to enforce it.
Anyway, the elemental won/lost nature of drag racing is part of its core character and really appeals to the American sense of fairness. You get your shot at the clock. Win and progress to glory. Lose and go home to try again another day. Not much margin for interpretation is there?
Unfortunately, this basic won/lost equation has been dissolved in some of the bracket classes where the driver is less important than an electronic device against the clock. I’d advocate heads ups racing across the board, but I’m still getting email about saying that there should be only one fuel class – apparently I can only provide so much enthusiasm for change in a column for you all to take in.
But the above are some points I wouldn’t change in drag racing one bit. In fact, they need to be pushed to make its character all the more visible in today’s worldwide competition for the hearts, minds, and pocketbook of the motorsports world.
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