THEY'RE SHUFFLING THE PRO MOD DECK...AGAIN
By Jeff Burk. Photo by Bruce Bennett
Remember way back in 1990 when IHRA first debuted Pro Modified? In
those days the class had few if any tractor-trailer rigs, corporate
sponsors, spares and rules. it seems to me, back then Pro Modified was
a lot more fun for everyone involved than it is today. The class was
full of racers like Ronnie Sox, Blake Wiggins, "Killer" Brooks, Robbie
Vandergriff, Bill Kuhlmann, Scott Shafiroff and Donnie Little, just
to name a few, who were active and successful in the class. Pro Modified
was a kinder and gentler place to race in those days. It was a class
where a racer with a small sponsor like Tim McAmis and his sponsor Matt
Johnson could win a World Championship. It was a class where the bump
spot for the 16-car field at St. Louis in June of 1991 was a 7.346/185
by Brian Gahm. That number might not get you in the top half of the
Top Sportsman field today.
In those days I was the editor at Super Stock & Drag Illustrated and
I ran a story that urged the fans to get out and enjoy Pro Modified
while the class was still fun, entertaining, and relatively affordable.
I was of the opinion that soon the class would become another Pro category
burdened by the political and financial baggage that inevitably comes
to every professional class. As it turned out, unfortunately, I was
right.
It wasn't too long after that first season that almost every serious
player had tractor-trailers, fancy uniforms, six-figure budgets, and
Pro attitudes. The fun, affordability and innocence that marked the
early years of Pro Mod rapidly disappeared along with many of those
early competitors.
Fast forward the class a dozen years and it appears that the same kind
of cataclysmic changes that occurred to Pro Modified in the early nineties
are about to happen again, except this time they may be even more traumatic
for the competitors.
These changes in the class actually began last year when NHRA adopted
the Pro Mod class as both a professional exhibition class and a Competition
Eliminator class. As a result of NHRA's action, racers and companies
who until then hadn't given Pro Mod much thought or credence because
it was exclusively an IHRA class became interested. There was even more
interest when NHRA dropped the Pro Stock truck class after the 2001
season.
Now comes the news that for the 2002 season there will be some serious
new, well financed teams running with both sanctioning bodies. New-comers
include many-time Pro Street World Champ Bob Rieger and former NHRA
Pro Stock driver and NMCA World Champ Tony Christian who have both acquired
multiple cars and engines and hired crews for the 2002 season. Rieger
is self sponsored, Christian has a sponsor. It is known that Troy Coughlin
would very much like to run the NHRA Pro Mod series and Mike Ashley
has announced a new two-car team with Tommy Mauney. All of these racers
are somewhat different from what the class has seen up to now. These
new guys are full-time, professional racers whose only job is to race
and to win, period. Up to this point in the history of Pro Mod only
Scotty Cannon has had that kind of program and all he did was win six
IHRA World Championships and totally dominate the class. When Cannon
went to NHRA and nitro funny cars you could almost hear the sigh of
relief from the IHRA Pro Mod racers he had been pounding on for a decade.
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