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“I am not turning my back on the bracket racer, I’m
just taking on another job," Howard says. "I am
going to try my best to turn bracket racing around, which
I think is in deep trouble now, the reason being that there
are so many people who wake up one day and decide to be a
promoter. This is a free world, and people are welcome to
do that, but when you have a 10-grander on every corner on
every weekend, the racers can’t keep up with it. That’s
why I elected to drop out this past year, and for personal
reasons too."
Those personal reasons include the health of his wife of
33 years, Reba, whom George met at Birmingham’s Ed Salem’s
Drive-in one night when he was out with his then-new ’69
427 Biscayne. It was, for him, love at first sight. Lately,
Reba has been undergoing chemotherapy, but she is on the road
to recovery, he says.
Will Howard's idea to save bracket racing work? Well, the
idea of sportsman heads-up racing without an index has been
tried before, most recently by “Drag News” magazine
editor Todd Silvey and his “Run/Tuff Eliminator”
heads-up program. Silvey's program was based on a strict tech
program and “Run/Tuff”-specific-built cars with
an engine “claimer” option, much like that based
in the sportsman roundy-round series of local races across
the country. Silvey had to kill the program after one year
because of lack of participation.
There was another that I remember, a program begun in the
Midwest for door cars with specific engine displacements and
weights and tire sizes. That too died after the first year,
some 10 to 15 years ago.
It’s a tough sell to many bracket racers. But the concept
is cool, and from talks I’ve had with racer friends
of mine who run heads-up at local tracks around home (Georgia,
Alabama, south Tennessee, the Carolinas and some parts of
Florida), they are hungry for something other than “package”
racing, where you can lose to someone with a .510 reaction
time and a dead-on run.
I called George up one day last month and told him I felt
the same way. “[My wife] Fran raced my new front-engine
dragster last month and went out with a .015 package,”
I said. “I wanna run some of this heads-up stuff. Got
anything in mind?” That’s when he started explaining
his new racing idea.
All I can say is, we’ll see. I don’t have the
money to race Competition Eliminator, and Super Comp has gotten
ridiculous --- leave the line, slow way down on the throttle
stop, pick it back up, run 160 mph and hope you cross the
finish line without breaking out by .004 or better. Same for
Super Gas and Super Street. Just ask a spectator at a divisional
or national race what THAT’S all about.
Heads-up, no-breakout, cheap racing on a Pro tree, plus brackets
to boot? Maybe that would be cool.
“I’ll put these heads-up races on at Huntsville
for the first 90 days," Howard says. "If it’s
successful, I’ll continue to do it every week. Plus
brackets. We’ll have to lower our bracket purse a bit,
to throw our money over this way. But I’d like to get
this so big that the racer doesn’t have to pay an entry
fee. He’d be like a Pro Modified guy --- race for free.
The reason being, he’s helping me fill these bleachers
up. I want to get the sport of bracket racing back in the
heads-up mood, but don’t throw bracket racing away.
Bracket racing was the savior of drag racing. I think I can
do both."
“I want to be the one to change the face of sportsman
racing a little bit. I want to be the one to figure out how
to put butts in the seats and grow another successful series.
What I’m saying is, I’m coming back to work.”
One other thing that Howard has in mind is to do a series
next year called the All-Star Outlaw Shootout, in addition
to his bracket and heads-up series. It will be all heads-up
only, Outlaw Pro Mods, for which there will be no rules, plus
Outlaw Automatic Pro Mods, 10.5 cars, Limited Street and 6.0-
and 7.0- indexed classes. It will be a six-race series based
out of Huntsville. He will also have races in Memphis, Bristol
and Atlanta, with the season finale being at Huntsville. All
will be run eighth-mile, therefore cheaper for the racer to
race.
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