T Minus One Month Till the March Meet

With just about a month to go until the March Meet, nostalgia teams everywhere are doing their level best to get ready for the 2015 Heritage Series season.

Some teams have already been either testing at the Big Show test and tunes taking place or have already been competing at the IHRA season kick off over in Tucson.

The Champion Speed Shop guys with driver Adam Sorokin tested in Phoenix with some of the big show teams and the car with new paint showed some promise. The car now in bright red is stunning. Sorokin has, however, tagged it the ‘ketchup bottle,’ but those of us who know Adam also know he really wasn’t born on this planet. Therefore…

This past weekend a whole group of Heritage Series teams participated in the IHRA Good Vibrations Nitro Jam Southwestern Nationals in Tucson.  These included, Will Martin, Bob Godfrey, “Hollywood” Kris Krabill, Roger Garten, Mike Halstead, and Dennis Swearingen. Former series champ Jason Rupert, Tim Boychuk and the always-quiet Mark Sanders were also in attendance.

Martin debuted his brand new Speed Racer Omni. There was much talk about this car and the body. It turned out beautiful. Speaking of beautiful, that is the best way to describe the new Hawaiian of Tim Boychuk. This car is a stunning tribute to Boychuk’s long-time crew chief and drag racing legend, Roland Leong. 

Bucky Austin and Mike O’Brien’s new Bardahl-sponsored Trans Am takes me back to the Green Elephant days (dhows how old I am). The car is stunning and hopefully is a stepping stone for other companies to see the value to marketing with nostalgia racing.

The 2015 NHRA Heritage Series and the other nostalgia drag racing series should be extremely exciting.

Over the winter, I have documented many of the new cars and team situations that are in process right now.

From various accounts, it sounds as though there are a few new Top Fuel cars in process for this year. Mainly these are former A/Fuel cars that are going to make the switch over to top fuel. This is exciting news for the class.

There has been more talk about allowing rear-engine cars to run with the front-motored group. While some see this as a way to grow the class, others see history repeating itself.

Those detractors from this train of thought see the rear-motored cars as being faster because the rear-engine cars drive train and tire rules are parallel with the current nostalgia funny cars rules package. Moreover, with this perceived advantage, these detractors see this as a way of pushing out the front engine cars.

It is all speculation at this point as the Heritage Series powers that be have not made any decision on this matter, nor have any formal talks with the dragster owners association taken place to my knowledge.