By David Anderson
5/8/06
’ve been a drag racing fan, crew chief and most recently, a motorsports photographer/journalist nearly all my life. I’ve spent the last two years covering many regional races and also IHRA events. I recently attended the IHRA Spring Nationals in Rockingham, North Carolina, choosing to leave my camera and computer at home and enjoy the race as a spectator. While there was much excitement and great racing, I couldn’t recognize who the drivers were in over half of the cars out on the track in all of the professional classes. Could this be a problem?
While it’s understandable that the average fan might not be able to identify many of these fine racers, given my background and history, I’d have to say that it’s definitely something worth taking a look at. What I find thought provoking is that if I couldn’t identify many of the cars/drivers, how would the average fan even know who was running much less who was the winner?
As an example, I knew Rhonda Hartman-Smith was racing at this event and when I saw the orange FRAM-sponsored Top Fuel dragster make a track record pass, I immediately thought it was her only to be told “nope, that’s Cory McClenathan." I realize that after watching many NHRA national events I had made an immediate connection between the orange FRAM car and Rhonda Hartman-Smith as they were her primary sponsor for a few years. I wonder how many NASCAR fans see the #2 Miller Lite car and still think its Rusty Wallace and not Kurt Busch. Whoops, my bad!
While there are some easily recognizable cars on the circuit such as Clay Milican’s Werner Top Fuel dragster and Mark Thomas’s Ethanol Funny car, Harold Martin’s ACDelco Pro Modified, and John Montecalvo’s Citgo Pro Stock car to name a few, the majority are not immediately recognizable to most fans. I even had a hard time picking out Scott Cannon because the car wasn’t painted red!
While I applaud the announcers for attempting to keep the fans informed and entertained, most track PA systems can’t compete with the cars running down the track coupled with the fact that other than Pro Stock, earplugs are virtually mandatory (if you want to keep your hearing) and further dampen the sound from the already strained PA system. Put all that together and we’re left with cars making lightning fast runs with nameless drivers at the wheel. “Look at that red car with the cool flames on it go!”
When I first arrived at the track and walked in the Top Fuel pits, I easily recognized four-time World Champion Clay Milican’s operation but then saw a new Top Fuel team parked
across from his pits with Serta as the sponsor and the name Scott Griffin written in big letters on the back of the trailer. As I watched the car make its pass down the track, I had no idea that the driver was none other then the popular young Australian, Andrew Cowin and that Griffin was the team owner. Logic would say that the team might consider adding Andrew Cowin’s name on their trailer as Cowin is a popular figure on both the NHRA and IHRA circuits.When I had the idea for this story, my sole intent was to make a point that there was a disconnection between IHRA’s drivers and fans with respect to the ability to recognize them on and off the track. As I was doing some research, I then realized I didn’t know anything about eMax, IHRA’s new title sponsor. Now wait a minute! Could this “identity crisis” also include the main sponsor? The only thing I knew in Rockingham was that the Hooters girls were gone and there was new signage that read “eMax”.
Who is this company? What do they sell? Might they have something I want to buy? I had no qualms frequenting the local Hooters from time to time (now that they don’t sponsor IHRA I’ve stopped going there, NOT), my phone is from Sprint/Nextel and I prefer POWERade to Gatorade, so perhaps eMax might have a product a dedicated motor sports fan could use too.