THE MODERATOR: We'll now open it up for questions from the media.

Q. Dallas or Peter, what, if anything, transpired between June 5 when two NHRA officials confirmed Tom's absence to me and now? Why the delay in making a public announcement? 

PETER CLIFFORD: I don't know anything about what happened on June 5, so we certainly can't comment on that, but we made the announcement, and I'm not going to speak for Dallas, but we made the announcement as soon as it was available, and that's why we're here today is to make the announcement.

Q. Peter, with a change in president of a major organization like NHRA, it's an opportunity for the sport to do something different, to make a bold new statement, and I know that you're a low key individual like Tom was, so I mean, is it a time when people kind of want the NHRA president to reach out more and to be more visible, and do you plan specifically to do that, and how do you plan to be a little different that way? 

PETER CLIFFORD: I certainly do plan to be out there a lot going forward, and as far as a series of announcements, we do have a number of announcements that I just referred to with the initiatives that we're working on, so I think what you're going to see is a series of them coming out in rather short order. We all want the same thing. We want to continue to grow the sport and move it forward, and I think we have a good plan in place to do that.

Q. Dallas, you've been around for a couple weeks; what is your advice to Peter? You did this for a long time. What did Wally tell you and what are you going to tell Peter? 

DALLAS GARDNER: I'm probably not going to tell Peter a whole lot because Peter has been here for several years now, and he's very familiar with the issues. But I think that what we have we have always had to do is we need to balance the needs of our participants, our track owners, our marketing partners, our fans, and NHRA, and sometimes that's a hard balance to do. I think we have to listen. I think we have to look for new ideas. I think we've always got to push things forward. One of the things I see in Peter is I think he's really a good listener.

Q. Dallas, what reason did Tom give the board for deciding to retire at this time?

DALLAS GARDNER: Tom really didn't give a reason. Tom decided to retire.

Q. Did the board either directly or indirectly suggest or ask Tom to retire at this time?

DALLAS GARDNER: No, no. I would tell you that I was president for 15 years, and I think you all know that motorsports is a tough business. It's a hard business, and drag racing, I think, particularly is difficult. And Tom had been president for 15 years. It was no surprise to me that Tom decided he wanted to step down. 

Q. And a question for Peter. In your opening remarks, the first thing you referenced, which I'm sure we all are interested in, is announcements regarding television. Can you tell us today if NHRA will continue with ESPN next season?

PETER CLIFFORD: What I can tell you is we have some exciting announcements coming up in the next couple weeks. What we have already said that's out there is we're taking television production in house starting next year, and so it was previously done by ESPN regional television, and we're taking that on board next year, and that's going to be a big change, but we have additional announcements in the coming weeks regarding television.

Q. Does that mean that fans should anticipate that at least some of the races would be elsewhere than ESPN next year? 

PETER CLIFFORD: You've got to wait and see the announcement. I think it will be well received. I'm going to leave it at that.

Q. Peter, my questions would be, number one, is the NHRA Professional Classes still for sale? 

PETER CLIFFORD: To answer your question, the answer is no. I know there was a rumor out there the last couple weeks about us being sold to Bahrain or something like that, and these rumors circulate. It's not true. We're going forward as a company. We're very excited about the initiatives we have that I mentioned today. We're confident about our future and the company is not for sale. We're going to be focusing on these initiatives. 

The other for sale thing, we looked before about finding a great strategic partner out there to help us with television, and that fell through, but now we're pursuing it on our own, and we're very, very confident about the future. 

Q. My second question would be, will Tom be on the board of directors in a paid position like most previous presidents?

PETER CLIFFORD: The answer to that is Tom is retired.

Q. If the media is so important to you, why has the media director's position been vacant since March?

PETER CLIFFORD: I think you'll be pleased with the coming announcements. As I said with that, we have an announcement coming, and I'll leave it at that, but I think you will be pleased going forward, so there will be an announcement on that in the next couple of weeks.