DRO: WHAT IS MISSING IN DRAG RACING?

DGP: Anger. Anger against the business-head, bean-counter pinheads who are dragging the sport down with their unchecked power. Put drag racing on a graphic chart. Where has it been heading? Steadily downward, maybe? Who’s fault is that? Who has the power? It’s time for massive changes.

Anger against injustice without standing up and being heard. Until such time as the PRO racers take charge of their destiny they will gripe and moan to themselves as their freedoms and their cash flow are slowly being drained.

Philosophically, what I personally miss is what it had before computers. Grit. Raw essence. Purity. The introduction of the computer, I believe, changed the direction of fuel racing irrevocably. Today, whoever has the best computer has the edge. Thinking caps were replaced by Hewlett-Packards. But, such is progress.

What’s it missing? Its soul.

DRO: SOUL? IS THAT IMPORTANT?

DGP: It’s the root. NHRA has cleaned up and corporately neutered the sport to give it an image, a certain look. "We’ve got ignition???" In the process they sacrificed its soul. How about "We’ve got nitro!?" Corporations are profit-driven. That does not mean you will automatically make money by looking corporate. Drag racing is unlike any other motorsport on the planet. Nitro makes it that, not Pro Stock Truck.

The WWF (World Wresting Federation) doesn’t look corporate by a long shot and look at their huge success. They connect with their audiences. They give the audience what it wants. Nitro connects with their audience. The NHRA thinks there’s more to the sport than Nitro. That may be, but not if you want to cross over to the mainstream and impress people who wouldn’t know a digger from a taxicab.

I betcha they’d never forget the cack! And the same way I got hooked, they would too. An all-nitro TV show, done right, would accomplish more than NHRA could ever conceive.

Today’s technology can capture the cacking sound of nitro as never before. We got that sound on all our nitro videos. That sound is what energizes fans at the track. It could do the same to TV viewers. But when was the last time you saw a TV show with fuelers dramatically staging with incessant blathering over cack, cack, cack.

Nitro is at the core of soul.

DRO: HOW DO YOU WANT TO BE PERCEIVED, OR DOES THAT EVEN MATTER?

DGP: You know, life is too short. And all of us have a purpose. Mine is what I do. It doesn’t fit in with mainstream anything, but it works for me. I do what I do and nobody does what I do. I’m sure I don’t have an exclusive on that philosophy, but I don’t know of any other one-man television production company.

My contributions to this sport are well documented and on record. Besides, what does it matter how someone perceives you? The only thing that matters is how God perceives you and whether you did your job to the best of your ability. In the end you gotta look at the man in the mirror and you can’t fool him.

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