Send Lawyers, Guns 7/8/05
For the DRO staff it was a good, old-fashioned road trip of the sort racers like to talk about over a couple of adult beverages when bench racing. From bad airplane flights, bad fast food restaurants, lost room reservations, controversial races, amazing performances and angry racers, to racers overcome with emotion in the winner's circle, the Rocket City Nationals was a truly historic drag racing event. I initially got involved in this race after my new friend, George Howard, phoned me in early March of this year and asked if I would be interested in helping him put on a National event featuring a qualified eight-car Top Fuel field and a bunch of other heads-up classes. Since I've been advocating that drag racing start having eighth-mile National events in some of my columns over the last five years or so, I leaped at the opportunity. The first thing George and I decided was that this would be a racer friendly race: no entry fees for the Pro teams, primo parking, and what we thought were really good payouts. The Top Fuel purse for an eight-car field was just under $200,000! The Pro Mod purse was $20,000 and the ten-wide racers had a $5,000-to-win race. Add in Super Stock, Stock and about four bracket classes and my buddy George was into the race for well over $250,000 just in purse money alone. So you would figure we would have to beat the racers off with a stick, right? Wrong, clutch dust breath! I've been writing about and photographing drag racing professionally for 30 years now. I've been a racer for 15 years longer than that. As both a racer and racing journalist I've listened to racers bitch a lot over the years and a majority of that time the bitching inevitably boils down to money. Either it costs too much to race or the sanctioning body and/or promoters won't pay the racer a purse that allows them to make a little money when they do well. Over the period of my career as a magazine editor I've taken the racers' side 95 percent of the time against the management. I've made myself pretty unpopular in the boardrooms of sanctioning bodies and the backrooms of drag strip towers for taking the racers side and taking management to task for treating the racers poorly. So, when I had the chance to help promote an event where the racer could actually make money if he or she won (or least break even if they just qualified), I jumped at the chance. "If we pay them good money, they will come," I told George when he asked if the Pro racers would come. I originally proposed that we just pay what NHRA pays at one of their "A" races, which is generally about $40,000 to win and $9,000 to qualify for Top Fuel. "Hell," said George, who also promotes the Million Dollar Race for bracket racers, "let's do up right. I'll pay $101,000 to win, $10,000 to qualify and we'll even pay the 9th and 10th racers $2500!" "We'll have to beat 'em off with a stick," I told George. "Two laps on an eighth mile for $10,000? At an NHRA race they have to make four or five quarter-mile laps to collect $9,000." But just to make sure that we gave the fans a good show, at Gainesville in March I went to a couple of team owners I know fairly well and have worked with in the past. I approached Peter Lehman and Don Schumacher and offered them a guarantee to race. Peter Lehman shook my hand and said Clay Millican and the Werner Enterprises dragster would be there. And they were (even after Lehman sold the team). At the same time Don Schumacher promised Tony and the U.S. Army car's participation. Although it now appears that he never intended to race at Huntsville, he didn't tell us he wasn't coming until I called him about three weeks before the event. Over the course of a couple of months before the race both George and I got phone calls from other Top Fuel racers like the David Powers team who told us that if we put in a concrete wall on one side of the track, they would come. George spent the money to put the wall up and the David Powers team backed out at the last moment. A racer from Chicago named Ralph White called me for a week requesting an official invitation (for an Open event). I finally sent one and then talked to his crew at St. Louis the week before the race. They assured me they were coming to Huntsville. They didn't. I can understand well financed teams like Prudhomme's, Bernstein's or Herbert's not coming; they don't need a hundred grand, but those below them. . .I don't get it. I had similar experiences with Pro Mod teams who asked for invitations promising to come and didn't, keeping other racers that wanted to attend from getting a spot in the invitation-only event. So here's the deal. I'm not mad at anyone, but I am very disappointed and a little disillusioned. I suppose I should have known better after all of these years, but I really believed that if the money was right the Pro racers would support a race. George and I learned the hard way that isn't the truth. I thank those racers who did keep their word and came to the race. George and I won't forget what you did. I'm now convinced that for many Top Fuel and Pro Mod team owners, their egos determine where they race, not the money. And any commitment they make has to be suspect unless you have a lawyer doing the negotiations. I'm going to have a hard time in the future taking the side of the professional racer against management after watching George Howard take a $300,000 flyer and get minimum support from the pro racers and lose a lot of money. (By the way, Mr. Howard didn't cut a single cent from the posted purses despite the fact that all but one of the classes had short fields.) Right now I'm pretty sure I don't ever want to hear racers tell me or anyone else how they would do more racing if the promoters would just pay a little more. As far as I'm concerned right now that is just so much B.S. I'm an old school geezer I guess. If I give my word I do everything I can to keep it. It is a matter of honor with me. Evidently that isn't the case with a lot of racers. According to my buddy Dave Wallace who used to work in management at Orange County Raceway years ago, it's pretty much always been that way. I think I'm going to pitch those rose colored sunglasses of mine
in the trash bin and never put them on again. |
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had more fun at the $101,000-to-win Rocket City Nationals at Huntsville
Dragway than I've had at a drag race in a very, very long time,
as did my friends and co-workers Chris Martin and Ian Tocher. Historically
speaking, it was not only the richest eighth-mile event in history,
but also the quickest and fastest NHRA-sanctioned eighth-mile event
in history. 
