NHRA Did the Right Thing
at Gainesville

By Jeff Burk
3/20/03

NHRA has been getting a lot of heat from fans and racers over the decision they made at the just completed Gatornationals to run the Sportsman .90 classes at Carl Weisenger's Orlando Speedworld Dragway instead of Gainesville Raceway.

Judging from the letters this magazine received and the conversations I have had with some of the racers--and the actions of some of those very same racers--you'd have thought that NHRA had announced that cancellation of the .90 classes.

Nearly ever Sportsman racer I have talked to has vilified NHRA for their decision and, from what I was told, a group of Sportsman racers even got into a shoving match with NHRA officials at Gainesville when they were informed that they would not be able to race at that track. Although many times in the past I've come down on NHRA for the way the Sportsman racer is treated, this time I'm going to have to take the side of NHRA. I think they handled this situation as best they could under very difficult circumstances. And, yes, I was there in person.

NHRA appears to have a VP with responsibility for nearly every conceivable task or situation that goes on at one of their national events; however, one thing that no one can control is the weather and ultimately, if there is a villain here, it is the weather.

During the last weeks of February and the first week in March the Gainesville area was absolutely flooded. Strange Engineering's John Mazzarella, who spends a month in Florida at that time of year, told me that of the 28 days he was there it rained every day except five of them. The water table in Gainesville was so high that even when it wasn't

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raining there was water seeping up through the Gainesville track surface. NHRA, who owns the track, was forced to cancel several races they had scheduled. They were taking a bath literally and financially before the first trailer rolled through the gate.

NHRA was in a no-win situation. They knew that if they were to call all the Sportsman racers and tell them to go home because the pits were too wet to park in and then the sun was out for a week, they'd incur the wrath of the racers. If NHRA didn't call the racers and allowed them to park and sink their rigs into the earth up to the spindles, they would be in trouble, too. On top of that, the forecast for Thursday through Friday was for 50 to 70 percent chance of rain each day. NHRA was looking square into the face of a rainout and the loss of around of a million dollars in revenue, much of which they had already spent in advance on advertising, television crews, and travel expenses.

Was any of this the concern of the Sportsman racers who had booked non-refundable rooms and airline tickets months in advance or driven 1,000 miles one-way to get there? From the level of outrage I heard, apparently not. Many of them didn't give a damn about NHRA's disaster, only their own.

Never mind that NHRA paid the track owner at Orlando a fee so that the Sportsman racers that wanted to race would have a track to do so and a safe place to park. Never mind that anyone who bothered to walk into the Sportsman pits at Gainesville could see that the area between the pavement was a swamp and that it rained some time at the track every day accept Saturday and Sunday. Never mind that NHRA offered to credit their entry fee towards their next race.

All that many of those racers could see with was their own misfortune. Maybe NHRA should've sent the .90 classes home on Monday when they knew there wouldn't be parking for them, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of racers would have roasted them for that decision. Like I said, NHRA was in a no-win situation.

The problem is that evidently many racers view NHRA as being some gigantic racer benevolent association blessed with unlimited funds instead of what it really is, a business with good and bad employees, bills, a payroll, and mortgages. They evidently don't feel like NHRA, or IHRA for that matter, should be able to apply the same business practices to the business of racing that the racers apply to their own businesses.

As a Sportsman racer myself I long ago came to grips with the reality that all drag racing is an outdoor concert venue where the entertainment is race cars instead of rock bands. Nobody forces a racer to attend an event or join the association against their will. You can't be a victim if you volunteer and you can't act like a jerk just because you bought a ticket. Creating a scene that requires police only serves to make the management less likely to want to do you a favor the next time one is needed.

Drag racing may be your hobby but it is NHRA's and IHRA's business and they aren't obligated to allow people that cause them grief to buy a ticket into their store. Sportsman racers want to be treated as professionals but they won't be as long as they react to bad situations like amateurs who don't have clue about anything but their own little world.

On the other hand, NHRA and IHRA officials have to try and treat the racers more like they would any of their other business partners and not just rich hobbiests with unlimited funds. The one thing the situation at Gainesville proved is that racers and sanctioning bodies are co-dependent. NHRA understands that; on the other hand, the unprofessional actions by some Sportsman racers at Gainesville showed they haven't figured that out yet.

What do you think? Send your email to response@racingnetsource.com.

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