Yesterday, I ran a blog item showing a couple of runs being made by top fuel dragsters in Japan. What’s interesting about drag racing in Japan is that they do not believe in preparing their tracks at all outside of sweeping them and cleaning up any spills or leaks. There is no traction compound applied, no fancy pants tire dragging machine, none of that. A couple of the guys who commented on the item and emailed me privately thought that this would be a good remedy to the modern state of top fuel racing in the NHRA realm. I respect their opinion of course but I cannot see it having any sort of applicable effect on lowering the cost of racing at that level or bringing more cars to the track to compete. To use a twisted cliche, you can’t put the VHT back in the barrel.
If it was announced tomorrow that the NHRA would no longer treat their national event courses with traction compound, how would it lower the cost? A rig to haul your stuff is still the same amount of money. All the engine parts and pieces are the same amount of money, tires would actually be an increase in cost, chassis, fuel, crew help, etc is completely unchanged from a cost perspective. This is both prohibitive for adding new cars to the equation and keeping the existing ones running. There’s another factor at work on the car count front as well and that’s the sanctioning body. It can be argued that the cars wouldn’t “need” all the horsepower that they currently have, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean that crew chiefs wouldn’t try to use it.
Do you really think that NHRA wants dozens of nitro burning cars showing up? Hell no. In their world 17-18 is perfection. It provides a little drama for qualifying, basically assures that all of the major stars are racing in eliminations, and keeps their television broadcast package nice and tight so that insomniac audiences who sat though the Zimbabwe national ladies ping pong championship (which went into overtime) can catch ten minutes of a show that we supposed to be on for 90.
While it seems like I am totally dumping on the idea, I actually would love to see it happen. It would change everything overnight and it would effect everyone equally. It just couldn’t happen in the world of “big show” drag racing. The small tires guys have “no-prep” races at a bunch of venues. These are wild, off the wall affairs that have their share of wreckage and demolition derby action from drivers trying to stay with lost runs for too long. It takes an outlaw or non-sanctioned track for that type of stuff to be done normally, but it sure as heck happens and the videos are highly entertaining.
From a spectator point of view, it would be electric because the driver would assuredly become an integral part of the equation once again. Unlike today when the vast majority of runs are decided on just the driver’s reaction time, an event like the race in Japan we showed you makes the driver more important than they have been since the slipper clutch showed up. Like the old timers in the 1950s and early 1960s that smoked ’em the whole way down the course and were driving like their lives depended on it to beat the other guy, it would make leaving, pedaling, and steering equally as important. Ultimately it would also alter the looks of what we now know as top fuel cars. Even the funny cars would eventually chance in style when engineers and crew chiefs analyzed enough data to bear out what chassis changes needed to be made to optimize the combo.
If something like this were going to happen (and I get that it isn’t) now would be the time to do it. Professional drag racing is off the “drugs” of big performance records and ever increasing speeds. Like resetting the carriage on an old typewriter, making the cars run down the track on an unprepped surface would open up a lot of fresh real estate for new records and achievements. Like baseball had its era of “juiced” baseballs, so would we refer to the era of amazingly prepared tracks. It is fun to ponder what effect something like this would have on the sport of drag racing overall, but at the end of the day the money end of things would continue to outstrip all but the best funded teams.
That being said, how fascinating would it be to watch guys like Alan Johnson “figure it out” and get their cars to really haul the mail? To revisit the typewriter analogy, that is what drag racing has always been. Setbacks followed by incremental improvements. First it was the fuel ban and by the end of that the top gas guys were outrunning the speeds that NHRA tried to curb by banning nitro. In recent times it has been the switch in track length for nitro cars to 1000′ and look where we are again. Back to the insane speeds that NHRA was trying to curtail when they shortened the competition course length. You can slow these guys down, but you cannot hold them back. The true wizards of the strip will always figure a way to get quicker and faster and for many years in drag racing, that was the driving excitement in the sport.
Like the old saying says, “You can’t go home again.” In the case of professional level drag racing, you can’t put the VHT back in the barrel.
Last weekend it looked like they may have been trying this with one on the lanes.
While I respect your view here as well, it doesn’t change my perspective. I have been around this since ’63. I still think the smartest drag racer out there is Big Daddy. He expressed some of the things I’d been thinking of for a long time in an interview with Hot Rod Mag a while back, and of course, expounded upon them as well in detail I had not considered.
One point of contention is have with your perspective is NHRA. Who cares whether or not they would want or allow something. They are a sanctioning body, a very successful one, but they are only one. There have been many throughout drag racing’s history. NHRA has rarely been an innovator in racing, they always wait to see what is gaining in popualrity to the point that they can no longer ignore it, before “making it their own”, and acting as if they invented it.
I think the case could clearly be made that it would dramatically reduce the cost of racing, as well. Go read what Big had to say about engine use, etc, in concert with his ideas for “one and done” track prepe at big meets.
I think our differrence comes from you looking at it from a distinctly modern day image, whereas I’ve seen it from a very long time ago, and have seen what it was, what it is, and think that what it could be is somethiing quite in between. The sport does not have to exist with one major meet every other week in some different part of the country. Smaller events, just like the regionals, would net just as many spectators on any given weekend.
In the end, it doens’t much matter, NHRA wiould never turn back the advancement of technology. That’s why, other than when needed to support customers, I can be found at some small time track having fun, rather than bending over for the NHRA to get off on my efforts.
it would affect everyone equally – not effect.
They’d need to give up more than the VHT to get costs back under control and reconnect with the “traditional” “Walter Mitty” fans.
Tires would need to be made harder and narrower. “Hard” limits on drivetrain parts to reduce the “disposable” / “consumable” mentality that infects the fuel classes (if not all of the pros to some extent), and drive racers back to “sane” percentages of fuel. Strict limits on aerodynamics (i.e. stock body templates for floppers and doorslammers) would also need to be implemented. And the big rigs would need to be “taxed” or regulated out-of-sight.
Of course none of this will happen and the pro side of the sport will likely continue to “arms race” itself to oblivion.
Not just NHRA and Fuel cars. I watched and thoroughly enjoyed the live races Bang Shift covered this summer. There were times, however, that it looked like the “tractor nationals” with so much tme being taken up for track prep and that was for X275 cars and the like.
I blame the concrete tracks. Concrete is either rubber or ice. As far as good racing the Old Pomona surface was infamously variable due to it’s multi-use nature and lengthy idle stretches. Tell me there was no good racing at Pomona in the 60s and 70s?
Well written and presented piece mate! Well done and on the money!