Digs the ‘bucks down’ Bonneville streamliner

Burkster, thanks for including a shot of a Bonneville streamliner on DragRacingOnline.  I can’t get enough of those guys – They are truly “bucks down” racers like we all used to be before certain unnamed funny car racers spoiled drag racing by introducing “big money” to the sport.

Keep up the great work!

John Martin
Nixa, Missouri

Too late and too expensive?

Burk said: "With often just 16 entries or fewer in the NHRA Pro Stock class why aren’t Toyota, Honda -- or any brand of two-door sedans for that matter -- allowed in NHRA Pro Stock competition? Just who exactly benefits from the exclusion of non-Detroit cars?”

Ask Larry Morgan. He has a helluva time just getting into a 16-car show, and is often there by default. Can you imagine Honda, Toyota, or Hyundai trying to build an equivalent of the BBC or 500 inch Hemi that would be competitive in less than 5 years? The money and resources used would have to be unbelievable!

This is where NHRA (or somebody) dropped the ball about 3-4 years ago. Instead of a (Where’d it go?) “Factory Super Stock” Class, they could have made the Super Cobra jet and its GM and Mopar equivalents the new “Pro Stockers”. It would have leveled the playing field for everybody, put cars on the track that actually look like the cars that you and I can buy at the dealership, and possibly enabled other brands and manufacturers to begin to compete, as well as expanding the competing fields to more than the usual 15-16 cars at any national event. 

Instead, it blew Ford off, pissed Ford off, and kept the 16 “Professional Gas Funny Cars” in their program. A bad idea because it was just one more blow to the sport. 

John Largent
Pueblo, Colorado

Maybe less should be more for NHRA

How many years now have you been pounding on the same subject and for what? The glory days of the independent having a shot against the big boys in the sport are long over. Heck, even some of the big boys themselves have gotten out-spent and had to pack it in. It seems like every column you do yaks about low numbers, high costs, lack of teams, lack of fans and let’s not forget lousy television.

If NHRA wants to help themselves they can start right there. Broadcast the opener at Pomona, the Big-Go at Indy and the final points race at Pomona and call it good. Quit paying someone to broadcast your racing – it’s not helping! If they dropped to three broadcasts a year, they might actually stir up some interest in people ATTENDING! Cap the damn nitro at 1-2%, return to the ¼ mile (and if your track can’t handle it – stop having a Nats event there!) and let’s see what that does for it. Can’t be any worse than what is going on now – that’s for sure.

Charles Rutherford