 |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
In my opinion Bill Bader's style borrows heavily from P.T. Barnum, WWF president Vince McMahon, and the late owner of the Oakland Atheletics baseball team Charlie Finley, with the edge going to McMahon. The one thing that Bill Bader has in common with all of the afore-mentioned promoters is that he is in the sports entertainment business. In case any of you haven't figured it out yet, I'll tell you now that Bill Bader and the IHRA are in the sports entertainment business not the auto racing business. Vince McMahon uses tanned, over-developed, bleached blond ex-football players and aspiring starlets. Barnum used midget Tom Thumb and giant Robert Wadlow. Charlie Finley had tried orange baseballs and gaudy uniforms before he had Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. For Bill Bader, nitro burning, tire smoking, loud race cars are his stock in trade, but not his passion. A racer I know told me that years ago when he went to Norwalk Raceway Park as part of a booked-in show, before the gates opened on race day, the drivers and car owners got a little speech from Bill telling them that he didn't care who won or how fast they went as long as they did long burnouts, entertained his crowd and didn't oil the track. As owner of the IHRA Bill still adheres to that philosophy. As far as I know Bill Bader doesn't own a race car and has never seriously raced one. I don't think he has any real interest in race cars and I don't think he has any real love for the sport of racing. For Bill, racing is his business and his job is to make his business run well and make a profit, Just as a pro racers job is to make his car run well and make a profit. There is nothing wrong in that. The point to this tirade is that everyone (including myself) needs to understand that Bill Bader bought IHRA to turn it into a profit making business and to insure that Norwalk Raceway Park would have a "National Event." He didn't buy it to help the racers. We also need to understand that most, if not all, of the decisions that Bill Bader/IHRA (and make no mistake Bill Bader and IHRA are the same thing) make concerning rules, racing and pricing are done with an eye on Bill's and IHRA's bottom line and not making it cheaper, easier, or safer for the racers, as we saw with the recent Pro Mod rules changes and elimination of the Pro Outlaw class. Don't think so? Well, here are a couple of examples of how it works. Recently the Bader family added a big bleacher section to the seating at Norwalk Raceway Park that reportedly cost them around a million bucks. The reason for spending the money is simple: In order to make money at an outdoor entertainment facility you have to have inventory (seats) to sell.
The track then reported that they put over 30,000 people in the place to watch some high priced acts such as John Force and other NHRA nitro hitters match race. When the IHRA circus comes to that track later this month, however, the guaranteed purse for Top Fuel cars will probably be the same as it has been for over a decade. The reason for that is there is no profit in increasing the racer's purse. Still though, Bill Bader and his crew have moved IHRA into the motorsports limelight in a manner not seen since the heyday of Billy Meyer. NHRA now views IHRA as a serious rival, TNN dumped NHRA and jumped in bed with the IHRA. For the first time since Meyer changed the sanctioning at the 'plex, an NHRA National Event track has jumped to IHRA, Bill and Aaron were able to persuade Summit Racing Equipment to put up a Pro points fund the like of which hasn't been seen since RJ Reynolds abandoned IHRA and concentrated on NHRA. And just when some of the Pro racers were really beginning to get serious about safety and purses, Bill instituted rule changes for Top Fuel and Pro Mod that has kept them too busy to worry about anything else. Probably just a coincidence, huh? Maybe, but I think Bader the sports entertainment promoter had a lot to do with all of this stuff and that IHRA founder Larry Carrier, who had his own pitched battles with NHRA, is probably smiling about all this. Now I understand that TNN has the exclusive rights to broadcast all of the WWF programs next year and the brass at TNN want to find a way to bring a little of the WWF style to IHRA drag racing. Can you imagine those Joe Eszerhaus wannabees from the WWF writing the script for a showdown between the blown Pro Mod guys and their nitrous competitors? Maybe a Texas chainsaw death match between Fred Hahn and Quain Stott with their managers Jim Oddy and Gene Fulton at ringside. The loser has to leave Pro Mod and move to Pro Stock. Hmmm… I'd bet they could fill the stands at Bristol for that sports entertainment event. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
photo by Kay Burk
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright 1999-2001, Drag Racing Online and Racing Net Source | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
IHRA Pres Bill Bader is known by a lot of names. Among those that can be printed here-and we are a pretty liberal publication-include Dollar Bill, B-52 Bill, Messiah Bill, Mr. Bill and (my personal favorite) Darth Bader. Bill Bader is called a lot of things but the one thing you can't call him is Boring. 
