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4/29/03
Nitrous versus supercharged
(for the last time, I swear)
he powers that control the sport are talking about changing
the rules in Pro Modified again. I know, I know, I can hear
you saying, "That's not news. 'They' change the rules for
Pro Mod almost as often as Martha Stewart changes the linen
in the guest bedroom. That's not any big news nor is it unexpected."
True enough. So I swear -- and I mean it this time -- this
will be my last rant on this subject.
Two things that I heard this past weekend while attending the NHRA race at Bristol got me up on the tire enough to write one last time about this seemingly endless soap opera over making rules that will ensure that nitrous cars continue to be a part of the Pro Mod landscape.
(1) I overhead Graham Light tell Jim Oddy and Fred Hahn in the winners circle at Bristol, while he was congratulating them for their win, that "something needs to be done to try and ensure that nitrous cars continue to be part of the show."
(2) NHRA's Bob Frey announced over the PA that one of his sources told him something would be done by the rules makers (IHRA) to handicap the blown cars and that something would probably be yet another gear change. (I saw an IHRA official in the Pro Mod pits at the race, so I'll go out on a limb here and make the assumption that Bob's info could be right.)
The only question any informed racer, fan or journalist would have to ask at this point is why IHRA would or should change their rules again.
After the blown cars showed that they may have had a performance advantage over the nitrous cars at the beginning of the 2002 season, didn't IHRA's tech director, Mike Baker, change the rules immediately by adding a hundred pounds to the blown cars' minimum weight? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that act probably help nitrous racer Shannon Jenkins win both the NHRA and IHRA Pro Mod world championships last year? It's almost a certainty that a few more nitrous IHRA racers joined the class because of that. By the same token at least two serious nitrous competitors, Ed Hoover and Dale Brinsfield either changed to or added a blown car to their teams.
So, in 2002 the supercharged racers got hit with a rule change that basically negated all the work they had been forced to do because of the gear rule that had been imposed on their cars in 2001. They then spent the rest of the 2002 season working to overcome the handicap of their new minimum weight of 2700 lbs., while watching Shannon Jenkins' nitrous car dominate both circuits -- which, by the way, included winning races in both sanctioning bodies and qualifying number one in both IHRA and NHRA competition.
Now we come to the 2003 season. In the first two IHRA races of the year at San Antonio and Rockingham, where they have 16 car fields, six nitrous cars made the field at San Antonio and eight at Rockingham. So, at the first two races of the '03 IHRA season, nearly half of the qualified field were nitrous cars.
Over at NHRA's eight-car field, the results are much different. In three races no more than two nitrous cars have qualified at any one event. The blown cars showed a little power advantage in qualifying, enough to pack the top half of the field with blown cars, but on race days the elapsed times between the quickest blown car and quickest nitrous car was less than a tenth -- not an insurmountable number on Sunday in the world of professional drag racing drivers.
In an attempt to give the nitrous racers a boost, IHRA gave the nitrous cars and additional 25 cubic inches increasing the maximum size of their engines to 740 inches. Some racers, like Billy Harper and Ed Hoover, said they would immediately build new engines; others, such as Shannon Jenkins and Rickie Smith, said they wouldn't.
I wonder why any racer wouldn't take more cubic inches if offered. I still believe in the old drag racing adage "There is no substitute for cubic inches."
Judging from my conversation with various nitrous teams and drivers, the problem isn't so much about what happens on Sunday, but rather what happens in qualifying. The racers and owners that bitch the loudest complain that they don't want to race in a class where they don't believe they have a chance to qualify on the pole. Funny, I've never heard a Top Fuel or Fuel Funny Car driver or owner say that. For that matter, I've never heard that sentiment expressed from any professional class of racer except in Pro Modified. Unlike some Pro Mod racers I know, the only thing those other racers want is just a chance to get into the field and, if they have to race John Force, Larry Dixon or Warren Johnson, so what. Bring 'em on!
The reasons that so few nitrous cars make the program at NHRA's AMS Staff Leasing events are simple. Less than half a dozen out of the 24 cars invited to qualify for an NHRA race are nitrous cars and the field consists of just eight cars. The qualifying imbalance will continue until NHRA either invites more nitrous cars to each event or enlarges the field to 16. Right now between 30 and 50 percent of the nitrous teams invited make the program.
I love nitrous cars. I've had a couple of my own, but I never thought that cars with other power adders should be punished so that my car would be competitive. Hell, I remember when small block engines were competitive in Pro Stock but, when big blocks became the engine that dominated, NHRA eventually realized that they couldn't penalize racers that used big blocks in order to keep the small blocks competitive and soon the small blocks disappeared. Despite their absence the Pro Stock class remains popular with fans and racers, doesn't it?
So, here we are again, evidently on the verge of getting a minority rule, progress stopping, excellence punishing, Luddite rule that could give one group of racers an advantage over another.
Is this rule change being contemplated because Fred Hahn ran 6.07 ONCE?
If Shannon Jenkins were dominating the class like he did last year would IHRA be thinking about taking a hundred pounds off the blower cars? I sincerely doubt it.
The name of the class speaks for itself. It's Pro Modified. Not Pro nitrous oxide injected and a few slow blower cars Modified.
I say leave them alone or give the nitrous racers whatever they need but settle this and let them concentrate on racing. And I swear this is the last time, the very last time, I'll write about this 12-year-old nitrous versus blower doorslammer soap opera.
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