.

the car junkie daily magazine.

.

Barnstormin’: Professional Drag Racing’s Performance Clubs Are Closed…And The Thrill Is Gone


Barnstormin’: Professional Drag Racing’s Performance Clubs Are Closed…And The Thrill Is Gone

(Editor’s note: TWO ‘Stormins in one week?! Yeah, I had to get this off my chest!) Over the last couple of days BS has had stories up about the quickest AA/FA pass in history and the fastest 10.5-tire pass in history and the first 330mph IHRA top fuel run. These are exciting times in lots of areas of drag racing where the performance envelope is being pushed on a weekly basis. Improvements in categories like those mentioned above, as they are in all drag racing classes, are incremental. It is about picking up hundredths and thousandths of a second at a time. In other parts of the sport, particularly the NHRA professional categories that performance envelope has been sealed and for the most part it has been that way for more more than a decade. How can I say that? Aren’t racers going quicker and faster each and every year on the NHRA tour? Technically yes, but the fact remains that the era of being riveted to drag racing’s top tier classes and watching racers break performance barriers are long gone. Case in point is the fact that drag racing’s last significant performance “club” was closed out in 2000 when Ron Krisher became the 16th man to go 200 mph in a pro stock car. (I am not being disrespectful to the motorcycle crowd who had their six second club in closed in 2006, which is worth mentioning)

Performance clubs in drag racing were a huge deal back in the day. The first was begun in 1972 when Tommy Ivo became the founding member of the Cragar Five Second Top Fuel Club with a 5.97 shot. The most interesting thing about these clubs is how long it actually took them to fill up. Outside of the motorcycle club that filled up in less than a year, the next closest interval from the opening to the closing of a club was the Crans Cams 250-MPH Funny Car Club which saw all eight members between May of 1982 and September 1983. Other than that, it was a years long proposition to fill the eight or 16 spots that marked the most significant performances in professional drag racing. What that means is terms of spectator and fan interest is that people would be walking into a race track with that little thought in the back of their head that they may see something of historical importance happen at any particular event. It meant that a fan’s favorite racer may have not achieved membership yet and they were hoping to see them burst into the performance club that their class was eligible for. For instance, Don Prudhomme and Kenny Bernstein were the last two guys to make it into the Cragar Four Second Club. Imagine the tension and excitement generated by the fact that two of the greatest racers of their generation weren’t in the club with only two spots left! It was a three year quest to fill that one and to have it anchored by the two greats is pretty cool. Potentially even neater than that are seeing guys like Mike Brotherton, who isn’t exactly a household name (but was a top level competitor in the early 1990s) were in far quicker than both the very well funded legends. It shows how wide open stuff was back then. You never knew who was going to unleash a run for the ages and have their name chipped into the great stone of drag racing history.

The NHRA’s recent string of high profile sponsor woes and subsequent conversations regarding those stories brought the idea of looking at these clubs into my cranium. Why? Well because in the days when these performance barriers were being broken, the sport was able to be sold, marketed, and watched in vastly different ways. There’s no longer any way for NHRA to sell the sport to people as an event where they may see history made or see some amazing accomplishment that will be forever etched in history. While I am not one of the people that totally abhors 1000′ racing, I do realize and agree that the difference in track length has completely warped people’s sense of what “fast” is with regard to history.

The years long drama of filling the various performance clubs in drag racing history can’t be discounted when looking at the ebbs and flows of popularity the sport has seen. In the 1970s and into the 1980s it was the Cragar 5-second Top Fuel and 5-Second Funn Car clubs that had people riveted. After Ivo’s 1972 run, the 16th spot wasn’t filled until Frank Bradley went 5.96 in 1974. That meant for a solid two years people walked into a track with something look forward to outside of the pretty cars and the smell of nitro. On the funny car side, Don Prudhomme’s incredible 5.98 blast which was made in 1975 opened that club and there wasn’t a second member until Raymond Beadle went into the 5s THREE YEARS LATER. Imagine how many runs fans were on the edge of their seat for that ended with 6.01 or 6.00 on the score boards. You can literally hear the conversations they’d be having, “He’ll do it next time for sure!” or “We gotta come back tomorrow to see if he can do it!” There’s no marketing person that can instill that kind of excitement in a fan or into a person mildly interested in the sport through a TV spot, radio ad, etc. There are eight members of the Cragar 5-second Funny Car Club and it took an astonishing six years to fill the eight spots. Need I say more?

The 250-MPH club was formed along the same lines as the funny car club mentioned above. It was Garlits who opened the door on that one with a run akin to Prudhomme’s in the sense that his 1975 250-mph run at Ontario, California was not duplicated (speed wise) until Shirley Muldowney did it two years later! Those kind of herculean runs do not exist in drag racing any more. Period, end of story. They simply can’t. With the rules packages and specified equipment mandated no one can burst from the pack like that in the modern scene. That’s why the Lagana 330-mph run in Michigan was a big deal for IHRA fans. It was a milestone performance. Not on the level of a first 300 or a first four second lap, but a milestone none the less. As mentioned above, the variety of names in these clubs speaks to another of the problems plaguing the current world of professional top fuel and funny car competition. There simply aren’t very many people left doing it. In the 250 club are names like Jody Smart, Johnny Abbot, Terry Capp, Dave Uyehara and others that all made impacts on the sport but aren’t widely known by people outside of hardcore drag racing history fans. That was the beauty of the times. It wasn’t the same 15-17 people at every race. A Johnny Abbot could show up one event and lay ’em all out and then kind of fade into history. As a fan, what’s better than that? The unknown is a commodity that’s completely left all modern racing in professional form, not just the drags. The same cast of characters (many of which aren’t even really characters anymore) at same looking race tracks, making the same sounding statements to the media has sadly drubbed that unknown right out of existence.

The zenith of the “club” scene began in the late 1980s and roared through the 1990s. Being born in 1980, I can tell you from personal experience that I became a rabid drag racing fan during that era. When Eddie Hill smashed the four second barrier in 1988 and and others began to kick that door in, it was fantastic to watch. There would be races were competitors in either top fuel or funny car would trade the all time speed record for their respective class back and forth all through qualifying and eliminations. That was spellbinding stuff. As an announcer, I revel in being able to scream to a crowd that they just witnessed the quickest or fastest pass in the history of a facility and NHRA fans were seeing it on the bigger level of all time drag racing history. Again, as a fan what’s better than that?

1992 and 1993 opened both the Slick-50 300mph club and the Castrol 4-second funny car clubs respectively. Bernstein ran the first 300 and Chuch Etchells punched his flopper into the fours on a cool October day in Topeka. I remember reading the stories, watching NHRA Today, and then being there with my dad on the couch watching all this unfold right there in front of us. Great days indeed. It was two years before Rachelle Splatt closed the 300mph club (as one of three or four drivers tuned by Frank Bradley into it!) in 1994 and it took a solid five years before Tom Hoover went into the fours as the sixteenth and final member of the Castrol club in 1998.

All of this adds up to the fact that we’ll never see professional level nitro racing get back “there” again. A mph or two here and there. A tenth or two here and there doesn’t even scratch the surface of what this stuff was and what it meant to the sport of drag racing. The runs being made by wild doorslammers, fuel altereds, and other machines across the country buoy my feelings that great performance barriers are left to be broken and they will be broken. They may not be broken in front of a national audience and it certainly won’t have the cache of the aforementioned accomplishments but they are significant piece of history all on their own.

The point of all this is that pro level NHRA drag racing is suffering an identity crisis that is starting to play out as bold face rejections from corporate America. When John Force takes two massive body blows in the form of sponsor departures, it is a troubling sign for everyone else. Without being able to sell the idea of record breaking historic performances, an incredible gap between actual cars and what is being raced on the track, and a public that seems to becoming more nonplussed by 300mph runs, seeking an angle to convince people to show up or tune in and watch has become increasingly more difficult. Even more menacing is the prospect of selling a company on the idea of funneling millions of dollars to a race team participating in said competition.

The next 2-3 years in professional drag racing will bear out what the future of this part of the sport is. Some are rooting for a revolution and a return to the days of yore. Some are chewing their nails with nervous energy when considering the future and guys like us are just trying to make sense of it all. One thing I do know is that no one has a crystal ball and our time machine has a flat tire. Stay tuned everyone, this is going to be something to watch.

closed


  • Share This
  • Pinterest
  • 0

9 thoughts on “Barnstormin’: Professional Drag Racing’s Performance Clubs Are Closed…And The Thrill Is Gone

  1. TheSilverBuick

    I knew you had a DeLorean, even if it does have a flat!!

    You brought up a similar subject with Larry breaking into the 6’s and over 200mph on Drag Week. Monumental accomplisments, with only one clear hurdle for unlimited to cross being a 6 second average. Definitely has people on the edge of their seats during the event. Other classes have similar hurdles that are tangibly in reach and make it interesting to see if they’ll be crossed.

  2. The Outsider

    There’s nothing remotely “historic” about the WWE or MMA, but rabid fans seem to tune in.

    For professional racing to compete in today’s post-technological, oversaturated entertainment market, the promotors need more “drama.”. . . Not fake drama, but real, believable, human storylines.

    The immutable laws of physics and a century of progress suggest that there are few practical “barriers” remaining that promotors can rely upon to sell tickets at any level of motorsports. So they’ll need to turn to something else. They need drama . . . rivalries . . . David versus Goliath . . . working-class heroes . . . Risk.

    Drama is not the same small, discrete, and insular club of millionaires running each week. While fans need established “stars,” the stars need to be placed at some risk from scrappy unknowns. It can’t just be a weekly coronation.

    And there needs to be emotional “hooks” for the fans . . . good guys and bad guys . . . not just impeccable corporate automatons spewing out pre-rehearsed commercials, regardless of the circumstances.

    Finally, there needs to be a “Walter Mitty” element . . . a dream/fantasy connection between the fans and the racers that’s lost when the technophiles run up the costs and complexity much beyond the grassroots level. “Walter Mitty” is the basis of the old “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” saw. And such “identification” will still sell tickets.

    1. Matt Cramer

      Shocking… I totally agree with the Outsider here. Although I’d like to add that requiring more production based parts on the engines could not only both help with the Walter Mitty element, but it would slow the cars down to the point that it puts up new records to capture under the stricter rules.

  3. Ed

    I am “one of the people that totally abhors 1000′ racing”. If, again IF we still had 1/4 mile racing, the 350 mph club would be right around the corner. Then it would be the hunt for 3s.

  4. OldBob

    Damn Brian, you have really put my thoughts/concerns into a great article. I find myself more and more being drawn to nostalgia racing. Heads up, get the most out of the machine, 1/4 mile racing. I have tickets for St Louis Gateway next month, but I doubt it will be the same for me as years earlier NHRA. I hope the best for the NHRA, but something will have to change. Thanks for the insightful article.

  5. Jerry

    I lived drag racing for over 50 years. All 1/4 mile. I also go to nostalgia races only now. I quit NHRA at 1000′. I did follow it online until this year and left all the forums and NHRA website back in the spring. Sad to see it get to this state of stagnation but it is what it is.

  6. Matt Schiess

    I agree wholeheartedly except for one class of car. Pro Stock. Imagine the NHRA pulling the corks out(allowing EFI) and the body styles undergoing a revolution where they truly look like a regular car. And introduce the Weld Racing Pro Stock 5 second Club. (I used that company as an example) The technology is there. The fans are there ad I have already heard conversations in the stands about Greg Anderson or Mike Edwards busting that number out when EFI is allowed in Pro Stock.
    Professional drag racing is a lot like TV news and weather right now. It’s a dying business model, but something great is going to come out of this as long as the people involved have a servant’s heart and do the right thing.

Comments are closed.