As you know, we thoroughly love racing here at BangShift. We love it because we’re involved in it at a couple of levels, because we’re fans of the people who are racing and wrenching on the cars, and because we love the technology behind all the different series of competition. That being said, we’re like everyone else and we have a million opinions as to what’s right and what is wrong with various series. Now is your turn to make a suggestion on what to change and who is supposed to change it. This should be violently interesting in the comment section.
The premise behind this question is pretty simple. Auto racing has always been about plodding innovation and improvement with spurts of insane innovation along the way and it seems like we have run into the rocks in that department lately. Outside of some stuff like the Delta Wing car and a few other blurby things, outside of the box thinking has been squashed whether your favorite series runs really fast going left, really fast going left and right, or really fast in a straight line. We have our own opinions the who and the what but we do not want to taint the conversation here. We want your opinions in the comments section below and we want them as hard and fast as you can bring ’em!
BRAWL TIME! What Is The Boldest Move A Racing Sanctioning Body Needs To Make And Who Needs To Make It?
NHRA – Separate the pro and sportsman racing and make the show entirely nitro based. Pro Stock to sportsman, Pro Stock Motorcycle to sportsman, elevate Nitro Harleys to pro level. Two day events each comprised of a three-four hour show. Predominantly racing at night.
Go to a 8-71 blower on pro cars,and 1 mag. And of course go back to a 1/4 mile
NHRA needs to run 1320. Remove the electronics and let the driver drive the car. Pull a mag too. No excuses. Slower by a few tenths is sometimes better. I’d love to see a pedal fest again.
NHRA! If it wasnt for John Force and Schumacher fielding multiple cars in the pro ranks they couldnt fill a 16 car field! The days of the little man racing are over because the cost is out of control!
They cant fill a national event anymore, so yes it needs a complete overhaul!
complete overhaul is bang on ! Multi car teams boo ! Who wants to watch an all Force race, ‘specially in the finals.
Also, get rid of the “Countdown” !!!!!
Reward innovation. Oh sure, TF is faster than ever, and they had to shorten the track but, after all the trials and attempts to go fast over the years with Olds, Pontiacs heck, airplane motors , now we’re stuck in perma Hemi mode. Time for changes.
NHRA needs to include top sportsman and superstock to the TV series. When they are running pro stock they need to show the burnouts and talk pro stock instead of talking about TF/FC stuff. Also rule changes need to be made to bring the cost down so more cars can compete. Watching the same cars every week has gotten old. Their was a time when thirty or fourty pro stockers showed up.
NASCAR… Where to begin? Scrap the Chase, it’s stupid and an abject failure. Adopt a points system similar to V8 Supercars that rewards a good balance between winning and consistency.
Take the plates off at Talladega and Daytona, or scrap the tracks altogether. Plate racing is retarded.
Cut 10 races off the schedule.
Replace every second date at a 1.5 mile generic intermediate tri-oval, and replace it with real race tracks. Winchester, Delaware Speedway, Rockingham, North Wilksborough, VIR, Road America, and Mosport.
I’ll go one better: Make it like golf where if you don’t finish in the top 30, you lose your drivers card and you spend the next year driving in the Nationwide series. You want to see drama late in the season, be #30 and fighting to stay above that line. This would also do away with “ride around” drivers like Morgan Shepherd who start a race and ride around in the back, collecting paychecks and other drivers in a wreck.
I’ll take a different tack: Go back to the old Indy 500 rules where innovation ruled. Turbine cars, pushrod V8’s and V6’s showed up to compete. Indy has become just another race on the schedule and all the cars are the same.
NASCAR schedule- For starters, put them on dirt for 5-10 events a year, put them on road courses 5-10 events a year and change at least a few of those tracks every year. Make it a traveling circus like it used to be. Maybe a small town dirt track one week, to Sonoma next week, to Phoenix, then maybe to Irwindale!
Just build some variety into the schedule, that would get me more interested, and would really separate the talented crew chiefs from the rest of the pack.
NASCAR format- make it a one day event, or two- one day events, and run it like a Saturday night short track. Two 30 lap heat races with 10 transfer spots. Two 15 lap LCQ’s where the top five transfer. Wrap it all up with a 100 lap main.
That would keep me from falling asleep at a NASCAR event AGAIN.
NASCAR: Start with bodies in white and use production based late model V8 engines. OHC ok.
NHRA: Reign in ProStock with stock(er) body profiles and production based engines.
N.H.R.A. ….. It’s the same – old same – old …. Drop Pro stock bike , add Nitro Harley & Pro – Mod . Too many driver interviews ( do a lap …. do a driver – do a lap …. do a driver ) …..” NUTZ ” Get into the pits more instead …. go back to the true 1/4 mile ……
N.A.S.C.A.R. …. I quit watching the races when it all went sideways ….. Ban the Hemi , switch to small blocks & restrictor plates …. It all turned into high-speed parades
I understand the need & requirement for ” SAFETY ” but …. isn’t the whole point of racing to be faster & or quicker the next time out ? That’s going to require more room …. bigger tracks …. longer tracks .
We all know the ” Insurance & advertising companies ” run it all …..
Sooooo ” Same – old …. Same – old ”
Will an enema be required ????
Drag racing needs to return to why it became popular in the first place. A typical national event today means fuel cars with identical engines, tires, gear ratios, chassis, fuel, aero, etc. TF should again be free of regulation except for safety. How fast could drag racers go if again innovation was legal, especially in the electronic age? If shut down areas are too short for safety don’t race there. Television money will go where the action is and where the racers are.
This is the typical mentality that is so , so, wrong. First, if you go back to a regulation free system, the costs would sky rocket and the car count would be dismal. It’s bad enough now as spiraling costs have kept many teams ( WJ/KJ for example) unable to be competitive and away from the track. Doesn’t it make a statement when the #1 in points Pro Stock Team is skipping the last 2 races of the Western Swing because they’re trying to stretch their budget ? And The NHRA PAYS ESPN to air the races !n Why ? Because ESPN, and other networks, don’t feel that the races will draw enough viewership to get the advertising $ needed to make it worth profitable. Sad but true.
NHRA – In funny car, run a more “stock” appearing body instead of the current jellybeans. Same in pro-stock. Promote nostalgia funny cars, but with cubic inch, nitro % and blower size limits. Again, stock appearing bodies. Limit the number of cars on a team within each class.
NASCAR – I was a fan, but not sure if I even care enough at this point to try and fix it.
NHRA: Get rid of Pro Bike and add Pro Mod for all races
NASCAR: Stop with the cookie cutter cars and start racing real stock cars like they used to do. “Win on Sunday . . . Sell on Monday.”
Re-name Pro Stock because there’s absolutely NOTHING “stock” about these gas burning funnycars!
Indy needs to do something drastic – they’re arguably the ones who have fallen furthest, from being the pinnacle event of racing to pretty much forgotten. I’m with Turbo Regal here. So, here’s what I would do.
The new rule book would be almost entirely dedicated to safety requirements. Beyond that, there is only one rule: You would have X gallons of gasoline (or, optionally, a slightly smaller volume of diesel fuel) for the entire race, no more. Beyond that, anything goes, whether you want to build a featherweight car with a small engine, a gas turbine-electric hybrid, open wheel, closed car, whatever you think gets the car around the track the fastest.
NHRA Pro Stock rules change to 305 CID max with 8 stack EFI, True Factory Type Engines not a bunch of factory special parts. 3250 pounds, 10.5 wide tire, factory steel roof and quarters and doors, 5 speed, Come on NHRA get with it. I have not been member or to a race since the countdown crap started.
NHRA needs a major overhaul…….Scrap the copycat Countdown……..Nitro Classes 1 mag, 1 pump. 1320 Feet. Have an “Old School” National event…..NO DATA LOGGING ALLOWED. And have it on a track that they don’t currently have an event. Let’s see just who is the best “seat of your pants” tuner. Change the Pro Stock rules, and let a small-block car run with a weight lighter than the 500-inch cars——change things to encourage innovation…..This pre-programmed crap they call an event now, frankly, …………sucks………..
TF and FC: 1 Mag, no clutch management.
Pro Stock: Must be stock body from factory
NO bike classes other than Fuel Harley
Cubic inch limit on Pro Mod so they don’t outrun the funnies with the new restrictions.
Get rid of the .90 classes. Having cars siting for seconds at an idle in front of the spectators looks ridiculous
Let’s be serious – there are just too many things to be done, and few of those things will be done. One of the most influential things that can be done though, is to bring all cars back to a more production based appearance, like NASCAR has recently done. When a casual fan makes their first trip to a race expecting cars and they see what’s on the track at an NHRA race, they’re likely not going to be going back to a second race. The cars look ridiculous, like life size caricatures.
This will probably be like kicking a hornet’s nest but here goes. This is coming from someone with a no electric aid other than a single rev limiter, Jerico DR-4 (not a CL-4) equipped car so I’m practicing what I preach here. This doesn’t apply to any given sanctioning body, more a collective conciousness shift for the community as a whole.
For drag racing as a whole:
Delay boxes are silly, you’re building a single digit capable car to run a 10.50 index using a 1-2 second delay. Yes, it’s consistent and easier on the car but half the laymen that are only at the track to see the “main event” cars of the day don’t understand what’s going on when a serious looking rear engine dragster “stumbles” after the launch and have no interest in watching those classes. I’m okay with it only because it helps keep index classes alive which usually also includes cars running balls out to hit that index but when you watch a full field of delay box cars it gets OLD.
Have fun with the cars you build. There’s a local guy with a monster of a ’74 Skyline running a 100 some odd mm turbo with a Dart Little M based chevy. It’s a favorite of mine just because I’ve never seen another one and this car is extremely violent. It isn’t ultra finished or refined and the owner doesn’t have a high end hauler or anything else. That’s real racing to me.
More manual transmission cars! Again, I get it that the autos are more consistent, easier on parts, blah blah blah. A manual is more fun in my eyes and since noone pays for my racing but me that is what matters. I’ll happily say I might not be as deadly consistent as I would with a transbrake, air shifted ‘glide or TH400 but I absolutely enjoy the hell out of rowing gears. Dog box or synchro box, they’re all fun and more engaging to drive.
This all kind of sums up in one statement: Quit taking this stuff so seriously and actually have fun with it!
NHRA: get rid of throttle stop & timer racing. What a horrible way to watch racing. Fuel Cars: Slow them down with what has already been said and lets get back to the 1320. Lets see some good side by side racing. Put together a cost reduction package for the fuel classes and carry it all the way to the alcohol class.
NASCAR: Spec engines with EFI. More stock body parts. Cars don’t have to run 200 mph to run a good race. I was on the fan council. They didn’t like me. I told the truth.
NHRA: Steel bodied doorslammers, fuel restrictions, ban the hemi.
NASCAR: start over, basically. STOCK, PRODUCTION CAR BODIES. yes, they CAN be a shell with a tube chassis underneath, but the jellybean blobs they have now suck to watch. pull the restrictor plates on big tracks. Run road courses, run dirt tracks, give them the opportunity to cheat. cheating breeds innovation.