Check out my new column, On The Tire at dragracingonline.com

Check out my new column, On The Tire at dragracingonline.com: A new regional system

Be sure to check out my new column, On the Tire, over at www.dragracingonline.com
In my first column, I address the current situation with alcohol cars at divisionals and lay the groundwork for potential regional series.
Let's see what you, the racer has to say. Yes, NHRA is closely watching this...

 

nationals

sadly, i don't think we'll ever see alcohol cars at all nationals again.

in this theoretical system, there would be the same 16 national events with 14 regionals (2 per division).

one idea that has floated around is 3 regions rather than 7 divisions...east-central-west.

rumor has it that next year's sportsnationals in belle rose could have alky cars.

 

woodchip

i know we've disagreed on this in the past.

re: divisionals vs. proposed regional system.

the biggest driving force behind why i think we need this is forward progress. the current system is broke. for more of an explanation, read the column.

for one, i would vehemently oppose starting a regional system with a payout structure identical to the divisionals. that defeats the purpose. it needs to mirror the national event payout, at least to 8 cars.

ok, so now each division has 6 races. these races pay $600 or $700 to qualify, all of them only pay $2500 to win. in the regional system, you're looking at traveling to either more nationals, or other regionals. a national pays $1700 to qualify. that extra $1000 in payout will cover a decent chunk of the additional travel vs. what you are doing now. you'll be racing at an event that has some marketing value, pays better, and under better/safer conditions.

making the alcohol classes more marketable to sponsors is the key to the class moving forward. the end goal is making it easier to get sponsor dollars on the team level. a national/regional series is much more marketable than what we have right now with the divisional series. most of these divisionals do absolutely nothing to promote the shows...no crowd equals no marketing value. the track doesnt want you there, and you're getting paid squat.

i understand there will be less races to go to in a particular area for teams. first off, like i said above, the nationals, and proposed regionals payouts would offset a good chunk of increased travel. then if you factor the "on paper" loss of money going to those extra divisonals, should offset the rest, if not put you money ahead.

that's also why i think in this scenario to race for the championship it would need to be the best 8 of 12 events.

getting sponsor dollars into the class is the key to growth in the class. both getting existing teams to the 'next' level budget wise, and creating opportunities for new teams to get in the door.

this is all contingent on nhra putting together a series similar to what i mentioned. something with no payouts and a structure condusive to back gate profit and no crowd, would be just taking a divisional and calling it a different name....i'm not for that at all. if it means less races for better quality, and drastically better opportunity for racers, i'm all for it.

if local events are what motivates a racer, i'm pretty sure just about every track out there wouldn't mind booking you in to make 4 runs for $700 ($175 a pass). that same track will probably book you in for the same money the finalists make (2 car $4000/$2000 ea./6 runs= $333 a pass). thats the money you're 'making' at a divisional.

honestly, if a track having a divisional still wanted alcohol cars, and i'm sure some of them would, you could get booked in at a more reasonable cost per run....$500 to $1000 is more commiserate with the cost.

my next column for dragracingonline will outline the structure i have in mind for this regional series. it should be out july 7th. if anyone's interested, i'll be glad to discuss it here first.

 

few points..

regions/races-
i have always said there needs to be 2-3 regionals per current division. in a three region system there would still be the same number of regional events (14-21), just less 'regions'

sponsorship-
you're right. alot of the deals out there are brother in law deals or someone with some money to blow and they want their name on a car and a write off. i'm trying to come up with a series that has enough marketing value to bring in sponsors based off the business merits of your plan, not stroking an ego and getting a writeoff.

travel-
like i said increased payouts would help offset travel costs. if you put the expenses to payouts going to 8 divisionals a year, the money lost on paper would easily offset remaining travel expenses not offset by increased payouts. so you go to the nationals you normally go to 4 to 5, you go to the 3 regional races in your division that you would normally go to in the lodrs, so there's 6-8 races of your schedule, so you're looking at 4 to 6 races of extended travel. if you normally go to 1 or 2 out of divisionals, that lowers the number of extra travel races to 2 to 4.

allstars-
this is where it would be beneficial to keep 7 divisions. if you had 3 regions, top two per region, with two wild cards...

promoters-
we agree on the lack thereof. i also agree tracks, whether on a divisional or regional system should have more of a turn key program.

testing-
i have to disagree there. it's hard to find a good track to test, but when you do, you can make a lot more ground than you can trying to learn at a race. case in point, we went out with callaway's car last year, tried a different approach, missed it on first two runs, rattled off a 5.51 in the middle of a bracket race, showed up at valdosta two weeks later and won the race, running a then career best 5.45. if you have little to try, then you're right, testing does little good, but who doesn't have something to try? in testing, you can make a few runs getting something right, at a race, you might have one run, at most, if you're in the field to try something differnet. if it doesnt work, you scrap it till you get another run somewhere down the line. in testing, if it doesn't work, you can go make adjustments the next several passes.

 

re: match racing

the problem i see with match racing funny cars these days is what it costs to run one of these cars and what they can pay to have a pro mod race.

alcohol racers don't test that much any more. most spend every dime they can on making races.

the 1/8 mile tracks are probably the biggest market for a match race. they can get an 8 car pro mod show down here for $7500 bucks. on a decent track an outlaw pro mod can run 4.0's and 3.90's. for an alcohol funny car to justify getting paid more, it needs to run 3.80's, which isn't real easy to do on some tracks. it also cost money because you're going to have to turn up the wick. sometimes you'll find a track that will pay decent money. if not, you have to find another racer that wants to 'test' and knows that for $2000 for 3 1/8 mile passes, he's going to spend money out of his pocket to run an 'extra' weekend at a track he'll never compete at. not to mention the time involved. of course you could run it soft, but then you defeat the purpose of testing.

i absolutely think that booked in alcohol shows can bring in some money. to do it right, in my opinion, a track needs to have a $45,000 budget (expenses/payouts/advertising) to do a show right. most small market tracks don't have a budget to allow for that. they spend $7500 on a pro mod show and $3000 is a big advertising budget for a show. see above for the 'lack thereof' of promoters these days.