Notes from a cluttered Notebook

I get a lot of requests from readers and friends to join a variety of social media. I just want to say here that if you are one of those who have extended that invitation to me and I haven’t joined your Facebook page or forum or what have you, please do not take offense. Although DRO and our other magazines are on Facebook and Twitter, I personally do not use any of the so-called social media to communicate. At the insistance of my much hipper and connected daughter I have a Facebook page but to be honest I haven’t looked at it in at least a couple of months and frankly I don’t plan to.

Call me a Luddite, but I am one of those who much prefers communicating person to person. I like the phone and I’m getting acquainted with something called Skype and I hate (and I do mean hate) forums and sites that allow anonymous people to write the worst crap about people, organizations, or news with little or no restrictions. The bravest critics in the world often hide behind a pen name. They are cowards!

So, just for the record, if you want to communicate with me use the phone, send an e-mail with your real name or catch me at a race or some other event. I like to talk and look the other person in the eye. I know I am in the minority in my feeling about the use and abuse of electronic social media but I’m kind of used to being in the minority and hopelessly uh-hip.

Having said that, you all have access to DRO’s phone number and my email address. If you want to talk to me I’ll be at the IMIS show in Indy this weekend and I’ll be glad to talk to anyone about almost anything -- but especially racing.

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Soon John Force Racing will join Don Schumacher Racing and Kalitta Racing as a nitro team with both Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars. Right now I would take those three teams, give you the field and 100-1 odds that the World Champs in every nitro class will come from one of those three teams. A lot of fans write about how unfair that situation is, but in big-time sports entertainment whether it is NASCAR, baseball, football, soccer or pro lacrosse, the teams with the most money to spend win the championships almost 100% of the time. It sucks for the underfunded, but it is a fact of life in professional sports and you may as well get used to it because it isn’t going to change.

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I believe the NHRA is slowly but surely losing the iron grip it has had for almost 60 years on the sport of drag racing. There was a time when the only really big races the premier drag strips held were NHRA national events and those tracks pretty much toed the NHRA party line. But these days the owners of those tracks have found that there is racing after the NHRA and they are welcoming series like Super Chevy, ADRL, NMCA/NMRA and even the Mickey Thompson Tire-backed DRO AA/FC Challenge to fill up those weekends between NHRA national events. More and more track owners aren’t allowing the NHRA to dictate how they run their tracks. I have even noticed that more and more tracks are going “outlaw” and aren’t connected to any sanctioning body.