There is as yet no name for the 2005 series of bracket and heads-up sportsman racing, and Howard says the name will probably come along with a sponsor. It will be at Huntsville Dragway, and it might be a complete series, at five or six tracks in the Southeast, covering five states, he says.

His series will include both brackets and heads-up racing on the same race day. The same car can enter both.

“I don’t have all the classes figured to the ‘T,’ but I’ll have a class for a door car, back-half only, with steel heads, one carburetor and no power additives like nitrous, turbos or blowers,” Howard says. “Then I’ll have one class with a full-tube chassis, one carburetor and steel heads, then another class limited to two carburetors and no additives. Then I’ll have a class with nitrous, one system only, and it will be one carb and aluminum heads.”

Dragsters will have classes too, one for a small block with one carburetor and steel heads, another for aluminum heads over a small block and one or more carburetors. There will also be a dragster class for a single carburetor and aluminum heads, no additives, then finally an unlimited dragster class, like IHRA’s Top Dragster class.

For the Top Dragster and Unlimited Door Car classes, there will be a tire rule, a max tire size about which George is now getting input from Goodyear, Mickey Thompson Tires and Hoosier. “I don’t want no 16x32s with bead locks. You buy something like that, you’re looking at $3,000 for a set of tires. I want to keep the cost of this program low, for the sportsman racer,” he says.

Okay, let’s go over them again --- three dragster and four door-car classes – one carburetor, small block, back-half car only; then a back-halved car, big-block, two carburetors, aluminum heads; a tube chassis car class with one carburetor with steel heads, no power additives; and a door car class with aluminum heads, one or more carburetors and one system of nitrous. All cars will be equipped with Powerglides, to keep the cost down and to keep the Lenco/Pro Mod guys out of the classes.

“I have the rules close,” George says. “I’ve looked at elapsed times over the years, and I think brackets can mix in. A racer will be able to show up at my races and he will have a bracket race to race in and heads-up classes to race in --- both, on the same day. He can enter two classes to race.”

Why the idea? “My first place in drag racing is bracket racing, and it (brackets) will always be in my heart. But I’m trying to come up with something new for bracket racers, and I have some formulas figured out, to take your average bracket cars and turn them into heads-up cars, not based off an index, but kind of like the old Modified Production days. We’ll have visual tech as to what is there (on the engine) to race with.

“I want to put some butts back in the seats. I want spectators. They don’t know and don’t understand bracket racing, so they won’t come. But they DO understand a Pro tree start, and whoever gets there first wins,” he says.

Howard has put on --- shall we say, unusual --- races before, where he has given away spectator tickets to bracket races, and spectators didn’t even come. That tells him that bracket racing is in trouble as far as spectators are concerned. For an average race track to stay in business, it has to have spectators, he says. “And being a track operator, no one understands that more than I do,” George says.

Two tracks that will probably host his new bracket/heads-up shows are Bama Dragway near Jasper, Alabama, which Howard owns and recently leased to promoter Darrell Taff, and Huntsville, which Howard leases. He is sure that if the concept catches on, a lot of other tracks will adopt the format on their own.

The rules aren’t set in stone yet. When Howard comes home from the December PRI show in Indianapolis, he’ll finalize them. “I’ll talk to everybody, to get some help on these classes, and I’m going to try and do this to where I think it’s the fairest way. I want the people who have supplied the bracket racer for years involved. Plus I want to see some spark put back in sportsman racing. It has lost its spark,” he says.