DRO: Let’s talk nostalgia for a minute. Fast Jack Beckman got out there and turned her over at Sacramento. How do you feel about nostalgia drag racing? Does it appeal to you at all?

LB: I really don’t have an opinion about it. To be honest with you, me personally, I enjoy the high technology end of the NHRA drag racing, and when I’m not involved with that, I have other passions in life, and I do those rather then looking at the nostalgia drag racing. Not saying anything negative about it, I understand that the guys involved with it, and I have some very close friends, guys like Jerry Ruth, and they have a ball doing it. It’s a lot of fun doing it. So I don’t really have an opinion on it.

Don Schumacher, who had left the room, returns.

DRO: Don, where you having a PRO Meeting?

DS: No it was Ray Alley (PRO President)

DRO: Was it about a PRO meeting?

DS: [Laughing] Well, if we have a PRO meeting, all it is is a bitch session in a conference room. We’ll screw all this other stuff, I’ll rent the room and buy the coffee and doughnuts, and we can all go bitch to each other, then leave and go do our thing.

LB: Did you tell Ray Alley that his opinion shouldn’t even be on the table? That he represents PRO and….

DS: Well, I told Ray Alley that from the day that we( PRO) hired him, that he’s not a team owner; he runs the board, and that’s the way it is. He certainly needs total discretion to make decisions when he needs to make a decision, but it’s not something, it’s an opinion in. There’s safety things that he looks at and he needs to be able to make a decision that something is okay or it isn’t okay. And if he’s unwilling to do that, if he has to come and get board members to do that, why do we need him?

DRO: Well, my question would be why doesn’t PRO have a one-year rotating program where a team owner runs PRO for at least a year and then lets someone else do it so that when NHRA comes to talk to you guys, as PRO, the head of the program has an understanding of what’s going on out here and can actually make a coherent decision?

DS: The biggest problem was how you started that sentence: “When NHRA comes and talks to you.” I’ll leave it at that.

DRO: I asked Lee about nostalgia, I know you’ve got a car and driver you help (Justin Grant). How do you feel about it? Do you like it? Would you come watch it? You know we’ve got a six-race series that I’ve put together.

DS: Not if I’m out here running this 24-race series. When I have a weekend off, I like to do something with my family, it isn’t to attend a nostalgia race, a NASCAR race, an IRL race, open wheel race, or Formula One race. I have NO interest in it.

DRO: Lee, you’re a big Formula One guy, what is KERS? Kinetic Energy Recall System? They’ve got a button on the dashboard they can press now, they accumulate kinetic energy and store it somehow, and then down the straight they hit it? Have you heard about it?

DS: A little bit about it. I don’t quite understand it. It’s kind of kept under wraps.

DRO: Interesting. I just thought you might know something about it, being kind of a gearhead yourself.

DS: The thing about Formula One that I really like is that technology winds up filtering into the automobiles we drive today. All of the things, ABS brakes, traction control, a lot of the things that are on cars that made them so much better today, came from Formula One technology. That’s the part of it I really like.