NHRA article on yahoo (not good news) (1 Viewer)

in the late 60's and early 70's with only 3 or 4 national events the divisional races had top fuel, top gas and so on, cars were much slower and and cheaper. you could make a few runs before taking the heads off, go thru the valves and back to the line Crowds were amazing and the racing was great, not much prize money but you could match race damn near every weekend and make pretty good money. the funny cars came along and stole some top fuel thunder but if you had a decent car you could almost break even or make a little somehow or another we need to get that back nhra needs to get much smaller to survive. have a hunch the suits will take all they can till the bitter end rather than come up with a plan to save the sport they may try eight car fields but I doubt if the spectators will show up for a shit show time is ripe for another sanctioning body to kick butt
 
Michael, you bring up a fair point and something that I've thought about for a while. Would there be more pro racers if the NHRA schedule were shorter and there were more booked in match races? I don't even know if there's a market for match races anymore so I'm just throwing that out there. The little guy could come out for a guaranteed payout in exchange for 3 runs, or whatever the event format was.

NHRA survived, even thrived, back in the days when racers were running IHRA and the mid-week booked in shows. Many of my fondest memories are seeing the likes of Bobby Lagana facing off against John Force and others at New England Dragway's Funny Cars Under the Stars. Chicago style format, it was just a good time.

Even back in the 80's and 90's you had the "local guys" who would show up to the national event that was near their hometown. With all due respect to JFR and DSR, I just miss the vibe of the old national events.
 
sure you can...good payouts + smoothly run race = excitement and satisfies the fans.... covers all bases

A racer's idea of a smoothly run race and a fan's idea of the same thing are totally different.

A now-deceased track owner who was a racer before he bought the dragstrip he owned told me once that the first thing he had to do was stop thinking like a racer and start thinking like a track owner.
 
This Wednesday night! Funny Cars at Lions! Yep, I went there, so strange to be at Lions on Wed (which was normally test n tune or ET races), and the 8 cars show was over by 9 PM, so you could get home early & get to work Thur morning. I don't think they ran that many Wed nitro races, but it was cool. Times were so different then.
 
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