Just to clarify a bit, my thoughts on this were really two separate parts. Part one was to stage the car since the engine was idling fine, the emergency shut off sequence had not been triggered, and there were no fluids leaking or anything abnormal like that. I have seen several times over the years where a driver stages the car then doesn't move at the green light. Afterwards he/she says something like, "I looked down and I didn't have any oil pressure so I knew I wasn't going to make the run so I just staged it in case my opponent made a mistake." In similar scenarios I've heard crew chiefs say, "Yeah we hurt blah blah blah during the warm up and we knew we couldn't make a full pull so we decided to bring the car to the line and stage it, just in case our opponent had some misfortunes." So the competitor in me was thinking along those lines as I was watching it live and seeing the guys struggle trying to pack the chutes. "You're never going to get the chutes packed in time, but since the engine is running fine, might as well roll forward and stage it, take the green light, then shut it off."
The second part that popped into my head was the thought of actually moving the car after he staged. Again, the competitor in me started thinking, if Blake had staged the car what if his opponent banged the blower right at the hit and coasted to a stop at 100 feet? Should Blake then just idle down the track with the chutes deployed to take the win? Most of us have been around long enough to have seen chutes deploy early on cars. After thinking about it more, I agree, it's a bad idea to leave the line with the chutes on the ground, and shouldn't be allowed. But my first thought was I have seen several cars, especially alcohol funny cars and blown alcohol dragsters (which I'm sure Randy Goodwin can attest to) shake so violently their chutes fall out anytime between the initial hit and half track. I guess over the years I've seen plenty of cars go 1315 feet, or 1300 feet, or 1260 feet, or 1020 feet, with their chutes fully deployed because they fell out prematurely. So in my mind I was thinking, "is this really all that different? Blake's chutes fell out before the tire shake instead of after it. He should still be able to safely idle down the track if his opponent has some real bad issues." Just wanted to further explain where I was coming from.