A FEW WORDS FROM TONY THORNTON
Rather than going back and forth to each side I thought I would ask the man who has had more time invested in the Association than anyone else, the longest serving ANDRA Chief Executive Officer at 23 years, Tony Thornton who must be holding his head in his hands at the way the sport in Australia is currently headed. [Also see our 2011 InnerView with Thornton– Ed.]

"When I was in the role I was never the subject of so much scrutiny and negativity that currently exists thanks to the rise of Facebook and other social forums," Thornton admitted. "When I left the job (in 2011) ANDRA was in a very enviable position financially and the sport was taking advantage of television and increased sponsorship with opportunities for even more. Since I left, the excellent offices that we had refurbished were sold, our calendar was changed (and then changed back again) and now the MAJOR tracks can't work with the organisation".

"This job was always a balancing act – you have the racers, the tracks and the business of running drag racing. Most of what ANDRA does is behind the scenes. It is about safety, scrutineering cars and bikes, handling the media, ensuring that everything runs like a clock to keep everything going. Everyone has time and money invested – the racers with their cars, regular maintenance and travelling to the tracks, promoters are trying to do the best job they can with advertising, promotions and prize money but as happens what do they do when it rains and they have to can the race and have 10,000 party pies left to get rid of AND A SIZEABLE OUTLAY ON ADVERTISING, WORKERS, OUTSIDE SERVICES AND SO ON – it is hard for them to keep going when this happens more than once in a season," he went on to say.

"This time last year the tracks tried to do the same thing but it was averted however this time they have had enough - Ironically when I started my position at ANDRA on September 19, 1988, it was the very day that Bob Jane decided to pull his tracks from ANDRA sanction," Thornton revealed. "Talk about being thrown in the deep end but we made our way through it and came back stronger than ever."

"I guess the thing that has happened is that ANDRA has changed into a company and Malcolm Bulley assisted in that process when it was undertaken. Greg Humphries came in after I left and the resigned though ill health. This meant Rob Sharp had to take a caretaker role up until the time that Bulley came in as the new face of ANDRA. Since I left the board and Bulley have claimed ownership of the sport of drag racing in Australia and with that comes a lot of pressure to live up to expectations."

Thornton and I talked about the IHRA and the likelihood of them coming into the Australian market. "I was in New Zealand in February and asked a number of locals how things were going under there under the IHRA," he told me. "Some said that it has been a mixed success with costs being cut with the new model but others said it was pretty much as it was before. What the general punter doesn't realise is all of the work that goes on in the background that they aren't aware of," he added.

Currently ANDRA has eleven full time staff, divisional/State directors, stewards and scrutineers. There are 28 tracks, 41 drag racing clubs and around 3800 members. Liaising with all those separate individuals doesn't just happen at the flick of a switch – it requires a huge and constant effort.  There are policies and guidelines to go through, rules to be checked and updated, bulletins to send out and ANDRA members to be made aware of what is going on in the organisation as well as a myriad of other tasks from sending out licence renewals running the monthly and Annual General Meetings.

Anyone that wants to run drag racing in Australia is up for a mountain of work and as Thornton continues they better be prepared. "Without competitors the sport is nothing and this has meant that Group 1 owners [Top Fuel, Pro Stock, Top Alcohol, Pro Stock Bike, Top Bike and Top Doorslammer – Ed.] have to commit to reap the rewards. This requires a huge commitment to ensure that the fans are entertained and the show is up to scratch."

"You only have to look at the recent Lamattina crash at the Winternationals. That car was one of the most advanced chassis in the world – it only had five runs on it and yet it had a catastrophic failure. Crashes such as these need to be analysed and information learned to ensure that this is prevented from ever happening again," Thornton admitted. Certainly there is a hell of a lot more to running the sport than just holding a good event or three.

In 1981 the late South Queensland Divisional Director, Milton Adey, came to me at the presentations after the Nationals in Adelaide and said that ANDRA should be running the events. Though that didn't happen for another twenty years he was to see able to see such an event when the "Racer Nationals" was run by ANDRA in 2001 at Calder Park in Melbourne. I asked Thornton if the event made money.

"The event was affected by rain and in the end because of this and other factors ended up running up to the nightly curfew. With about an hour to go Bob Jane asked me if we needed more time and if so he would try and square it away with the local council but just as he said it a competitor blew the radiator in his car and covered the start-line with Glycol and that called an early end to the event. The event should have made money in the same way that the previous Nationals meetings had at that track, however it didn't," he reluctantly revealed.

CONCLUSION?
In an attempt to give you some idea at both sides of this argument we have come up to nearly 5,000 words and haven't really scratched the surface. The short answer is that if anyone wants to run drag racing in Australia they will need to have a strong technical base and at the same time keep all the other balls in the air and in the end they will hopefully put on an excellent show. In closing I thought I would leave with a nice little story that Tony Thornton told me concerning ANDRA's first Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Syrmis who then went on and became the manager of Willowbank Raceway in Brisbane.

"Dennis came to me a few years ago and said "I just couldn't do your job again – it just seems so much harder than when I did it". One of the things that not many people knew was that Syrmis was actually a big fan of the IHRA and the way they did things – the same but in a different way. Over the last few days there has been a lot of comment on Facebook and the forums and one pundit said that 'Syrmis would have turned over in his grave' if he had seen what was going on. Well, I don't think he would have done so and I reckon Dennis would actually have a big smile on his face," he concluded.