Are the sanctioning bodies going to start scrutinizing everyone in contention for a championship? And we haven't even begun to talk about the nightmare of checking all the sportsman racers at IHRA and NHRA divisional events. And what about bracket races where the winner is in line to win $10,000, $50,000 or even over $100,000? If there are

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MSD boxes that look 100 percent stock but contain a traction device, who is going to be able to tell who has the traction device?

The problem here is that the traction control genie is out of the bottle and it is going to be impossible to put it back in.

The real question here is why the major drag racing sanctioning bodies don't just follow the lead of F-1 and understand they can't control the use of traction devices, and make their use legal. For drag racing, racers and their fans, the benefits would be both tangible and immediate.

What professional racer at the recently completed NHRA race at Seattle forced to race or qualify in that facilities left lane would have refused a traction control device? (See Seattle racer quotes in Race Coverage section of this magazine for examples of their feelings.) With all of the poor track conditions we've seen this year in both NHRA and IHRA National Events, wouldn't the fans both in the stands and those watching on the tube be better served with side-by-side racing?

Even a case for traction control being a safety measure could be made. Maybe those Pro Stock racers that crashed at Columbus could have avoided that fate with traction control. I'm not saying it absolutely would have prevented the crashes, but maybe. A case could even be made that traction control would save everybody in this sport some money. I mean, the track owners and sanctioning bodies wouldn't have to spend so much money on track prep. Got a little moisture coming up or down on the track? Send 'em we got traction control now. We could maybe even race in the rain. Why not?

As for the effects of traction control on the racers and tuners, again I don't see a problem. As long as everybody has it, the field is level. The current highest price for one of these "illegal" units is $7500. I'd bet MSD could make one a lot cheaper. Oh, excuse me, they already make one for carbureted and blown cars under a grand, don't they? And as for a traction control device making a back marker suddenly go to the front--forget about it. In the history of drag racing (or auto racing for that matter) no one rule change has kept the premier racers from finishing first or made a winner out of a leaker!

And one last bonus I see in allowing traction control is that the tuners could go back to concentrating on making power instead of trying to figure out how to take power out of their combination so they can get it to go down a junk track or lane.

Rumor has it that Ray Alley is going to have meeting August 1 to discuss traction control and possibly legalizing it. Let's hope that common sense prevails for once.

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