The NHRA and IHRA currently split up sanctioning tracks with about 100 tracks each. What if there was no IHRA to compete with the NHRA for licensing racers and sanctioning tracks? The IHRA is the only entity that keeps the NHRA in check and from complete domination of the sport. If that doesn’t scare you as a racer, track owner or sponsor then nothing will.

I suggest that it is in everyone’s best interest, racers, manufacturers, sponsors, and publications to support the IHRA, IHRA tracks and IHRA racers with attendance, sponsorship and moral support so that it can remain a viable alternative series. I’m not saying to only support the IHRA and not the NHRA or vice versa! I like them both for different reasons, but I am saying that if the IHRA were to go away as a sanctioning body for professional drag racing it would be very bad for the sport. God only knows what the NHRA would do if they were the only option for racers and tracks in drag racing.

NHRA Pro Stock full of drama, distress, and distrust!

The NHRA’s Pro Stock division is in pretty serious disarray and its future is cloudy any way you look at it. At the St. Louis race I was told that many current Pro Stock teams were going to be done after the season. Among the marquee names mentioned as quitting the series were Shane and Jonathan Gray, Allen Johnson, V Gaines and others. As of today there has been no official announcement to that effect, but I have very reliable sources that say the Johnson team lost their sponsorship with Mopar and that deal went to Richard Freeman’s team, who will probably field two Mopars for drivers Jeg Coughlin Jr. and Erica Enders.

I can say with a very good degree of certainty that Mopar approached Freeman because they wanted to have Jeg and Erica driving a Mopar; Freeman did not call the Mopar folks trying to “poach” Allen Johnson’s sponsorship.

The Gray brothers have made it well known that they are done as full time Pro Stock racers and another Pro Stock racer rumored not returning for the 2016 season is Jason Line.

Another problem the class faces next season is the four or five part-time teams that have helped fill the Pro Stock fields in 2015 will be forced to basically completely renovate their current car and develop a brand new engine program. Short fields in Pro Stock could be the norm next year.

I have a possible solution to that issue. Instead of making obsolete all of the equipment that the smaller Pro Stock teams are using in 2015, why not give the current cars a one-year grace period? To insure parity increase the minimum weight for carbureted 11,000 rpm 2015 Pro Stock cars. Wouldn’t it be entertaining to see Pro Stock cars racing that weren’t clones of each other? Wouldn’t it be a good thing not to force those racers and their sponsors who have supported the class for years to just quit because they can’t afford a million dollars to change their program?

I think any decision the NHRA makes that injects a little excitement into what has become a boring class and allows more Pro Stock teams to keep racing makes sense.

PDRA returns for a third year

Congratulations to Mitchell Scruggs and son Jason. Mitchell Scruggs has been the main man providing the funding that makes the PDRA possible over the last couple of years. Despite most of the original investment group bailing on the series, Mitchell Scruggs, a man of his word, has stayed the course and will continue to support the eighth-mile doorslammer series both as a car owner and financial “angel”.

There are many car builders, engine builders and other drag racing businesses that rely on that series to keep their businesses profitable and in some cases stay in business period. Like his peers that preceded him as a benefactor for a Pro Mod series, Dave Wood, Tommy Lipar, Roger Burgess and even Sheikh Khalid Al Thani, Mitchell has put his money into a drag racing series and sponsored multiple teams for the love of fast doorslammer racing with the full knowledge they would never recoup the investment.

For those reasons and no others if all those men aren’t eventually inducted into a drag racing hall of fame there is no justice.

World champion of a booked-in class?

The IHRA once again named a racer a World Champion in a class where the cars are booked in and once again I’m taking them to task for it. It all started a couple of years ago when the IHRA had just two Top Fuel cars at their events. They actually named one of those racers a “World Champion.” This year they did the same in their “Pro” jet dragster class where four cars were booked in for the year.

Giving a “World Championship” to the winner of a two- or four-car booked-in show greatly cheapens the accomplishments of a true World Champion like NFC racer Jason Rupert. Rupert’s team towed all over the U.S. and Canada from California, had no guarantee of qualifying for a race, and used up their equipment and crew doing so. Winning an IHRA World Championship should be just as prestigious as winning an NHRA World Championship, but as long as the IHRA awards World Championships to booked in racers it won’t be!