Roger Burgess, the uber-wealthy and uber-enthusiastic Pro Mod supporter and racer, has formed the World Wide Pro Mod Association and has created an awesome World Challenge race that will be held in 2011. The race will pit teams from all over the world against each other in a team format.
Essentially a two-part race, the event will feature a Saturday team tournament where five cars from each participating country will race against the other countries to determine a winning country for the event and on Sunday there will be a conventional 16-car, every-man-for-himself eliminator to determine the best single Pro Mod team in the world.
This event is going to be epic and it will give the European racers a chance to really strut their stuff. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this will be a North American cake walk. The rest of the world has nasty door slammers as well.
The event will be held using NHRA rules and the location has not been announced. We’re guessing the first one will be here in the USA, but the press release does say that all of the participating countries will be able to bid for future races.
This is going to rule.
Here’s the whole press release:
Roger Burgess, owner of the R2B2 Pro Mod racing teams and the vision behind the Get Screened America Pro Mod Drag Racing Series, is announcing the formation of the WorldWide Pro Mod Association, a conglomeration of Pro Mod sanctioning bodies that will coordinate a Worldwide Pro Mod Challenge.
“Pro Mod is a class I love and it’s the most popular form of drag racing globally,” Burgess said. “Bringing all the world’s best Pro Mod racers together has been a dream of mine and now is the perfect time for this bold first step.”
The Challenge will be an Olympic-style competition run under NHRA rules. Currently six countries — the U.S., Canada, England, Sweden, Finland, and Germany — use NHRA rules for their races. Tracks in the various countries will bid to hold the event at their facilities. More countries will be added as they adopt NHRA rules for their associations.
Each country will be required to bring five cars but only enter four cars in the Team competition. One car from each team will be designated as an alternate during each race. Alternates will be allowed to try to qualify for a separate individual championship and may compete in the Team competition should the Team Coach decide to enter them. (The coach may choose any four cars to participate in each match). Matches that end up in a tie will result in each team getting 1/2 point.
On Friday and Saturday, the countries will race in a round-robin, match-style race where they will get one (1) point for each round win and one (1) point for each match win with a total of five (5) points per match up fro grabs. After each country has raced all the other participating countries, the two countries with the highest point totals will race off for the Worldwide Pro Mod Team Championship.
Additionally, the 16 quickest individual drivers from the Country Competition will race a conventional elimination ladder on Sunday with the overall winner being crowned the Worldwide Pro Mod Champion.
Beyond the competition, the WWPMA will help its members with marketing, Web development and hosting, a rules committee, and an online store with profit sharing back to the teams and associations.
“We think it will be an event like no other,” Burgess said. “The response to Sweden’s Michael Gullqvist’s NHRA win in one of my team cars really opened the world to what we are doing with Pro Mod. I’ve been working on a world event like this for a couple of years, and now after the overwhelming positive response to Michael’s win it seems like the perfect time to make this move.”
