Now that racing season has ramped fully up to speed, my schedule for traveling and attending races that I am either working at or covering has gone completely nuts. This exponential increase in time flying the friendly skies has afforded me the shot to catch up on lots of reading. I’ve been on a kick with mafia books recently and there are some truly hair raising (true) stories out there. One of the elements that enters virtually all of these books at one point or another is the struggle for a character to bust out of the scene and go “straight” as it is referred to. Often times they are dragged back into the morass and let’s just say that none of these books I have consumed to this point have ended with anyone being better off then when it started. If you wondering what the hell any of this has to do with the NHRA’s Pro Modified class, stick with me for a minute.

Two of the three NHRA events I have announced thus far have included the Pro Mod class. This is great for me because I know some of the players and pretty much adore the cars and the attitude of the whole group. There were 28 cars trying to get into 16 spots in Gainesville and 27 trying to get into 16 spots in Houston, Texas. The next race in a couple of weeks is Atlanta and that one is already shaping up to be about the same way. This isn’t really that big of news though if you are an old time Pro Mod fan. I can remember like 40 cars trying to get into some of the old IHRA shows but there’s something very different about the racing we have seen at the first two NHRA contests of the years and that is the fact that of the 27 or 28 cars showing up, 27 or 28 cars have a legit shot to qualify and win the race. Back in the day, of those 40 cars about 20 of them were legit and of the 20 there were 10 that ran head and shoulders above the rest. This NHRA deal? Holy smokes.

We’re seeing Pro Mod racing (I am speaking only for the NHRA series here, not for the sport as a whole) as an evolved organism at this point. Two races in a row set the two quickest qualified fields in NHRA Pro Mod history and the entire 16 cars were down in the 5s. The spread from number one to number sixteen was little more than a tenth of a second. With the available horsepower and the chassis technology where it is, Pro Mod races have become a lot less about which guy is going to center punch the wall and a lot more about who can go .00 on the tree and who can come up with a consistent and repeatable race car on Sunday. Pro Mod has gone straight…literally. The number of crossed up or barely in control runs I have seen in two weekends of racing wouldn’t even take all the fingers on one of my hands. Is this a good or a bad thing? Well, I am saying that it is good, and here’s why.

The immediate thrill of seeing some racer’s near wreck experience or worse, actual crash is replaced by the long dreaded clean-up process that can suck the life out of even the most exciting days at the track. Was it good for business about 15 years ago to have guys hitting each other on the burnout and swapping lanes on virtually every run? Sure it was. It got the attention of people who didn’t know what Pro Mod cars even were. Performances like that put them on the map, but there is no way to sustain and grow that end of things. As time has marched on and chassis have improved to the point that teams are able to apply more and more of that copious horsepower they are making in a controlled fashion, elapsed times have been dropping and drivers have become more focused on the drag racing side of their job as opposed to the survival side of their job.

Track conditions were giving other classes fits at Houston last week and rightfully so. It was hot, the asphalt was like 120+ degrees and the safety safari had worked their asses off to get it cleaned up and happy to race. I surmised on the microphone to the crowd that this would be a pretty conservative group of runs with more stiff hits coming later on. I happened to be right (it wasn’t like I leapt out on a limb) and while none of the cars made a record setting lap, nearly all 27 of them got down the track clean. The fans loved it. On Friday night they did the same thing except a faster due to a cooler race track, and then on Saturday morning the final desperation qualifying session happened and EVERYONE threw the sink at it. Some guys went, some guys went nowhere, but it was the way it was supposed to work! Intense, fast racing that was a rapid fire as you could imagine. If anyone left Royal Purple Raceway somehow let down by the Pro Mod show it was because they walked in hoping to see wreckage or something close to it.

If 900+ci nitrous engines, wailing blown engines, or rumbling turbo engined powered cars with cool paint jobs, doors, suspension, and drivers who have personalities isn’t enough, find another hobby. Like all things in drag racing, Pro Modified has evolved and what it has evolved into is one of the closest, loudest, and most evenly matched classes in NHRA drag racing filled with serious cars run by serious individuals.

NHRA Pro Mod’s gone straight and that’s fine with me.