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The tribes are gathering
6/8/06
There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that organized drag racing is the most popular motorsports in the world. Possibly more popular than NASCAR, IRL, and CART combined. Unfortunately, the popularity of drag racing is measured in the mainstream press only by the TV and attendance numbers fed to them by the National and International Hot Rod Associations and that is misleading in my opinion.
The fact is there are dozens and dozens of TV shows, paper magazines, Internet magazines and “house” publications devoted to or dominated by the sport of drag racing. Almost every performance-oriented magazine features drag cars or some kind of acceleration test. Don’t tell me Hot Rod Magazine, Popular Hot Rodding, Car Craft and the rest don’t depend on drag racing in some form to sell themselves.
On the other hand there’re just a handful of the half-hour TV programs that populate the ESPN, Spike, Outdoor and Speed channels devoted to the NASCAR, Indycar, and oval track fans and about the same number of publications. So, you are probably asking, if that is true, Burkster, why is it that NASCAR dominates the airwaves, mainstream sports pages, sponsorship programs and the consciousness of the racing public? The answer, knowledgeable reader, I believe lies in marketing and a common language.
Let me explain. I devoted many of my early years in this business to reporting oval track racing. I covered oval track races at locations like Joe Shaheen’s long torn down high-banked sprint car track in downtown Springfield, Illinois, to the high-banked half-mile pavement in Dayton, Ohio, to standing on track for the start of the Indy 500. As the editor of a racing newspaper that devoted a lot of space to oval track racing, what I discovered was that my readers and the fans that I went into the stands to sell newspapers to were oval track racing junkies. Sure, they had their favorite cars and drivers, and some preferred dirt to asphalt, but if there was an oval track race anywhere close, they’d be there.
For the most part it didn’t matter who was racing or what they drove; if the drivers were turning left the fans wanted to watch. When CBS introduced the world to the Daytona 500 back in the 1970’s they all watched and they continue to today. They are addicted and dedicated to oval track racing and they don’t care too much who or what is being raced. Bill France, Humpy Wheeler, and Bruton Smith, not to mention GM, Ford and eventually Mopar, started marketing NASCAR for all they could spend, while drag racing’s leaders were standing pat.
So, if drag racing has many more competitors, venues, sanctioning organizations, and print and electronic magazines to support them, why doesn’t it have tracks with 100,000 seats and better TV numbers?
The answer is fairly obvious, I think. Drag racing as a sport has the same problem as those folks in the Bible that were building the structure that came to be known as the tower of Babel. In political speak drag racing doesn’t have a strong base. We all claim to be of the same clan, but we’re splintered into separate groups that don’t speak the same language.
Drag racing as a sport today is made up of a bunch of cliques and special interest groups each with its own agenda. For the record I’m probably guilty of some of that; I am a nitro junkie. Drag racers and the fans are split up into more splinter groups than a Sixties Democratic convention.
Consider this for a moment. At any given NHRA, IHRA, NMRA, NMCA or any of the other alphabet organizations, there are as many as a couple of hundred classes at least. Then, to make matters worse, the racers' pit areas are segregated by class, interest, and status. And many racers tend to not wander too far away from their own area; they don’t mingle. The privileged few are parked on concrete in reserved pit areas. The Sportsman racer is almost always on the grass or dirt. What’s up with that? It's like they build a ghetto for those not fortunate to be called a Pro.
It goes beyond that. Drag racing has many sanctioning bodies that will only allow you to race if you own a certain brand of car or run a specific tire. Got a supercharger? Can’t race -- nitrous only here, buddy. There are even racing groups that discriminate against those who use the "wrong" transmission. Can drag racing be anymore segregated and elitist than it is now?
As a result we have a fan base for every faction of racing and a mainstream press that can’t find a commonality in the sport of drag racing. Drag racing has split up its fan base so much that none of the disciplines can attract more than 20,000 people in one day to see a race. Nostalgia fans won’t go see modern Top Fuelers, doorslammer fans won’t watch dragsters, Ford fans won’t go to a Mustang-only race, and no one attends bracket races.
I put part of the blame on AHRA founder Jim Tice who basically came up with the credo that no one who entered one of his races should leave without a class trophy, no matter how obscure or lame his or her ride was. As a result, a couple of generations of racers have grown up with the attitude that if the guy in the other lane has a car that is faster or quicker than yours then instead of making your car quicker or faster just get in a class for cars like yours so you don’t have to race that guy anymore. It wasn’t always that way.
NASCAR on the other hand has just three touring circuits and each one has just one class and one winner. Additionally their stars drive in all three divisions and there are plenty of fans and fan crossover.
But I’m getting more optimistic about the future of drag racing. I think that the pendulum is starting to swing the other way in that any kind of breakout racing is gradually losing its appeal to the current and next generation of drag racers. Everywhere I go more and more tracks are bringing in heads-up racing with few rules other than safety. They invite any and all brands or combinations to compete and guess what, the guys in the stands and the mainstream press love it. More often than not the racer with the best hot rod wins.
Here are a couple of examples of the progress I’m seeing. Roger Gustin recently made a decision to allow any GM car into his Super Chevy Show races. The Pro Street/Outlaw Street rules of the sanctioning bodies that have those classes have changed their rules to allow many more cars to complete. The NOPI Sport Compact series now allows Detroit products to compete in their premier rear-wheel drive class and the crowd loves it. ADRL’s Kenny Nowling allows turbocharged, small block-powered cars to compete in his Pro Nitrous class and has invited Sport Compacts to do the same. Again, the crowds love seeing different brands and disciplines compete heads-up.
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It is my opinion that if drag racing is ever going to really grow, we have to find a way to park our prodigious egos at the door and just enjoy drag racing without all of the baggage it’s accumulated in the last 50 years or so.
One last thought -- and I don’t claim this to be original because a version of this used to be the norm for drag racing. At the end of a national event make the winners of the fuel car classes run off so that we’ll have one winner. Don’t change anything else. Still award National Championships in Top Fuel and Funny Car. Don’t change the payout or the purses; instead award those two teams the points they get for going one more round. Then, finally we will have one nitro winner and a Pro Stock winner, and the sport can only benefit from that. 
