I think if nostalgia nitro racing is going to survive, two things have to happen. The promoters and the racers have to continue to invest in the class and the racers have to come to grips with the fact that racing these cars is their hobby not their job and they’re likely never going to make money racing nitro cars. That was possible in 1959 for T/F cars and in 1969 for F/C cars but this is 2009 and that no longer is an option, at least not in nostalgia racing.
 
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m involved in nitro racing at the level I am to have fun. If it isn’t going to be fun, I’m done.

On to the other subject that is personally giving me heartburn. What is happening to the racing soul of drag racers? I mean when did they fall out of love with racing to see who had the quickest or fastest hot rod on any given Sunday? I’ve been drag racing since I was 16 and have always done it for just one reason: to beat the guy in the other lane!

I believe it started with the bracket racers and the dreaded buyback. In order to monotize their races and actually make a profit, promoters of big-money bracket races discovered that racers would gladly pay for a second chance to win the big dough. Now almost all big-money bracket races are basically double-elimination tournaments, which has led to the best racers winning a large majority of these races. Anytime you give a pro two shots to beat an opponent chances are he will succeed.

Why not just double the entry fee and make the first round practice? It’s almost come to that already in big bucks bracket racing.

I’m actually surprised that some promoters don’t offer buybacks all the way to the final round. For me the buyback killed whatever appeal bracket racing held for me. Oh, the favorite lost to an underdog … yawn … the favorite will just buy back. Heresy, I tell you!

Now let’s talk about the hideous practice of having a Nostalgia Top Fuel or Funny Car qualified field split into the “quick” eight and the “slow” eight, where there are two winners, that seems to be invading the sport of nostalgia nitro racing under the guise of saving the racers and the promoters money.

This aberration began when the Goodguys were promoting the March Meet and they wouldn’t have enough cars to fill a 16-car AA/FD field. So, to insure that everyone got to race, they put in a second eight-car field or “B” main.

Actually they’ve had that scenario in circle track racing for nearly a hundred years. To stretch their show and give it more drama the promoters would have a “B” main and even a “C” main race for the racers in the premier class. The difference between the oval track racing and drag racing is that the winner and runner-up of the oval track “C” main advanced to the “B” and the winner and runner-up of the “B” advanced to the “A”.

Nostalgia drag racing’s version is nothing like that; it simply breaks the premier class in two, making sure that we have two winners and two runners-up in AA/FC and AA/FD.
And why are they doing this? I think because there are simply too many car owners who don’t want to lose and don’t want to or can’t spend the money to run with the big dogs.

I know many of you were up in arms over the reduction of the racing length in the Big Show to 1,000 feet because it violated the basic tenets of the sport.  I feel the same way about this A and B main crap. 
 
According to the promoters I have talked to, the Nostalgia Funny Car Association demands an A and B field at the races it sanctions on the West Coast. March Meet promoter Blake Bowser told me that the NFCA lobbied him for the A and B field and Lisa Jennings has told DRO that the 16-car field at Sacramento will follow that format. My information is the NFCA would like to see the same thing at the Night of Fire at Boise later in the year. 

Oh yeah, and apparently the purse for one of these A and B deals pays the first round loser of the “B” main $600.

Obviously I don’t like the “A” and “B” main program for AA/FC and AA/FC. As a journalist it is hard to explain to the average Joe why drag racing has so many winners, but to try and explain that the same class has two winners would be nearly impossible. Even more importantly, a mainstream stick-and-ball journalist would not be able to explain it to his readers. Drag racing is complicated enough as it is; let’s not do anything to make it even more so.