Help save TAD!

The FIA have proposed removing Top Alcohol/Methanol Dragster from the European championship at the end of this season. An online petition has been created at

http://www.petitiononline.com/tmdpet/petition.html

for people who wish to register their protest against the decision. Any signatures would be greatly appreciated by the racers in Europe who are working hard to convince the FIA to leave them alone and concentrate on keeping F1 cars off the track instead.

Thanks folks,

Andy

 

Andy, I haven't read up on this deal very Much. But It appears it's a matter of car counts?? Is that the Gust of it?

 

Yes Darren, car counts are the crux of it. The FIA wants to make Pro Mod a championship class because its car counts are high right now, but the promoters don't want the prize fund to increase. So another FIA class will have to go to make room for Pro Mod and TAD is on the block because it has had weak car counts for the last few years. Pro Stock may also be under threat if their car count drops any lower.

Hope this helps. There are several articles about this subject on www.eurodragster.com.

Andy

 

Hey Andy, it says "view signatures", but I can't get it to work. Can you?

 

Car Count of European TAD

The following teams have been running in the Championship the past years:
- Dave Wilson
- Peter Schöfer
- Rob Turner

New at this years Season opening Race "The Main Event" at Santa Pod and also entered for Norway and Sweden Championship races:
- Timo Habermann

I have heard that the following two teams have entered for the next Championship race in
Sweden:
- Arto Höylä
- Mats Björklund

And I have also heard that the following teams may be joing this years or next years season:
- Krister Johansson
- John Parkinson
- Lindsay Deuchar
- John Ellul

So as you can see something is happening over here, I don´t think it would be a good idea to cut the class know.

Andrea

 

Hey Andy,

The argument that promoters do not wish to increase prize funds doesn't hold water. Given that TMD is running arguably 4 entries then prize fund is much lower than that payable for 16 car ProMod field surely ? Or is ProMod being offered the same value prize fund divided up into smaller chunks ?

Go figure, but this whole deal smells of politics, not money...

 

Bob, the petition works just fine for me. Click on the number of signatures and it shoud take you straight to the list.

Jon, I have no idea what the prize structure is for Pro Mod at the moment but the bill for an 8 car TMD show (if such a thing exists) is around $16,500. Plus about $400 travel money for each competitor who is out of their country. All the FIA prize funds are in the championship rules buried in the nether regions of their website.

It's all very sad and cutting a class at such short notice can only put people off of making the serious investment needed to compete in an FIA class.

 

Andy, thanks for making me think !
I just leaned it .040, added 20 grams, and turned off Norton.

 

Andy,

As Carl Olsen said in his interview on eurodragster.com they have acted upon requests from promoters. I take that to mean this is a track promoter /FIA European series promoter driven issue.

You and I can both remember the heyday of European Alcohol racing in the early to mid nineties when we raced Pro-Comp style and had TADs and TAFCs competing heads-up in a weight break equalised championship.

Once we went over to FIA rules and implemented adherence to SFI we decimated the class as the low-buck racers were simply unable to afford it any more.

There was a further dilution of the strength of the class when split into seperate TAD and TAFC classes.

Seems to me the only formula for survival is to merge the two classes back together again, but who amongst the TAFCs is going to want to go back to weight break racing ?

European Drag racing as a whole has seen this kind of thing before; classes are popular with the fans and then seem to lose their power to draw crowds or fall victim to decreasing car counts as the weaker competitors are financially unable to stand the pace. The promoter is then faced with the only logical business choice of backing the next crowd pleaser...

Don't get me wrong I've been coming to the races since the late seventies and TADs are still my favourite as they are a true engineers and thinkers car, but in the European context I can't see what other choice the FIA Drag Racing Commission can make.

PS, for the record they're still puppets for the promoter in question though !!!!!!!!!!!!