Could the NHRA have done there end of the bargain to use as leverage for payment when/if they ever take legal action for the rest of the payments due?

One can only assume that somebody/team/sanctioning body will eventually take some sort of legal action.

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Legal action has already begun w/ three teams from the NHRA tour involved...

And Bobby L...you have to say nice things---your in the family, and Evan did not leave you w/ a half million dollars of debt to pay..

Excellent point Todd. This would have been wise for NHRA to do. In breach of contract issues it's very influential to the court when you've (NHRA) held up your end of the contract.

One only hopes there are assets that can be aquired to satisfy obligations that weren't paid for. It doesn't appear there's any real value left to the company. This may be like getting blood out of a turnup...

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Mopar to ya'!
Johnny Mopar

As A fan of Drag Racing I watch these posts and all the whining from people that probably don’t have a dime or part in any person racing. When I was young , about 12 I went to Englishtown and was hooked. Back then there were match racing which was better then the big shows because those drivers did it for the love of the sport and tried to follow their dream. When you used to race you would race with what you brought with you. If there weren’t people like John Force, Ed McCullah, All Hoffman and Connie Kalita the sport would have died. Now you have people on this site bashing everybody. And now you have the Evan Knoll bashers, I don’t know the man personally but I do know the good people that care about him. He gave people the chance of a lifetime. He gave people a shot at there dream and you bash him for that. When things got tough with his health everybody bashed him. 2 years ago there would have been a line of people wanting to kiss his ass . With him pulling out the week before the season it was tough, but I have been in business for forty years and you don’t go and buy a mobile home and trailer if you don’t have the stable money for it. When Skytel backed out no one started killing them did they? And thank god for racers like Big Jim Dunn they race for the love of the sport. And if all these people say Evan hurt them , they don’t want ot reach into there own pocket. You give me a racer that should not even be racing and will win and have fun and care about the fans for real and don’t care about false imaging. People look down on teams that don’t have 30 guys on their crew, who don’t have their personal chefs, who don’t have huge trailers and motor homes. It seems like no one cares about the underdog. They only wanna see the big names win. They wanna see the guys who have the money and the trophies and the fancy equipment gain more. But you rarely see a driver working on his own car. There are not many drivers that work 7 days a week 12 to 18 hours, driving there trucks, fixing their old beat up part and then restart for the next week. Ed McCullah said that in a few years there would be no crew chief who has never driven a car before. So for everyone who feels so bad for about the teams that got “screwed” reach into your own pocket and fund them. I Doubt that will happen.

Stephen, for someone who has been in business for 40 years like you described you should know a thing or two about contracts and obligations. Why should someone else pay a company's obligation they had with teams? Torco had agreements to sponsor a number teams going into this year just like Torco had agreements to sponsor the teams you talk about getting a chance of a lifetime a few years ago. The company had an "AGREEMENT", thus a legal responsibility to pay the teams. Some of these smaller teams you are talking about are the teams who are looking to pay off the debt they acquired building a parts inventory for this year. The bottom line is Torco has not met their obligations. I am happy for the teams who have been able to find sponsorship elsewhere and have moved on, but there are still the teams which have not been able to get back to where they once were. This is a message board and we have the right to talk about the good things and the bad things like this which is occurring in current state of drag racing. One more thing Stephen, it is McCulloch. I will be in E-Town this weekened and I look forward to meeting you if you are there.

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Whether or not they got screwed, or if they don't wanna reach into their own pockets is irrelevant. If Torco agreed to pay, then teams should be paid what is due.

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Evil Squirrels Are After My Nuts
Avatar courtesy of T-Nebraski
The reason I talk to myself is that I'm the only one whose answers I accept.

Many, if not all, of these Torco "Sponsorships" sound like they were more like "Donations" than "Sponsorships".

Just my humble opinion.....

Anyone that got well taken care of by Torco I'm sure has good things to say about Evan Knoll, and are greatful and rightly so for what he did for them. And I would feel the same way too.

But as a fan, watching it build up day by day with one new sponsorship announcement after another then to see it all come down as fast as it was built up should not be a surprise to anyone. Had he just sponsored 3 or 4 cars and an event or two, I don't think none of this would be happening.

I think where the haste comes in is seeing how it's all being handled with closed down offices, finger pointing, finger wagging, no products, questionable products, the checks in the mail, come see us next year, etc etc. One more thing, a friend of mine told me he went to them (the CFO) with a proposal that would put the car care products in C stores nationwide and they didn't even give a damn or care to do it. "They were just out to have fun" is what I heard. Well the fun is over isn't it?

A few years ago a character "landed" in the NW drag racing scene all the sudden and sponsored a bunch of S/C cars. He lasted a year or two when it was discovered he was stealing from the airline industry and then went to jail. He was laundering money through drag racing. I'm not saying that's what Torco was doing but if it looks fishy it usually is.

This is one of drag racing's biggest problems. The 60s and 70s are over, and drag racing fans need to get over it. 35 years ago you could run a fuel car on 20K and elbow grease but those days are LONG gone. Back then the refrain was "we need to be more professional" and "we need bigger sponsors" and "we need to be on TV". Well, all of that happened and the price of poker went up. Drag racing needs to quit worrying about the way things used to be and start worrying about what happens next, this "Grumpy Old Man" syndome just ain't cuttin' it.

The next thing people need to do is quit OVER EMPHASIZING what is posted on this board. There are maybe 500 regular posters here that represent a VERY small segment of the drag racing fan population. I would be willing to bet you that 90% of the fans in the stands are casual fans and could not care less about Evan Knoll or Torco and the big giant behind-the-scenes sh!tburger that he left everyone to eat. My Dad is the perfect example, he attends 2 or 3 National Events a year and watches maybe half the races on the TV, and it was Vegas 1 before my Dad said "Hey ... where are all the Torco cars?"

You don't like the whining? Don't read it or respond to it.

You know what I don't like ... someone whining about the whining and not offering any type of solution.

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