Does NHRA make money hand over fist? Unfortunately, not. If we did we would grow the sport faster than it's growing now. Are we in financial trouble? No! We do prepare for a rainy day because that's part of the way any business has to be run. We are on solid ground and we are going to be around for another 50 years. I do hope that in the future the company can be more profitable, because it can benefit everyone in the sport when that happens.

DRO: We have heard that NHRA is trying to sell off some of its assets. Is that true?

TC: It's not true. As the sport grows and becomes more popular and - as I mentioned earlier, we have done a number of things that have drawn quite a bit of media attention lately - the phone rings more. There are certainly people interested in just about every aspect of our business. We always keep our options open. We're trying to run it more profitably this year so, is it possible we could try to sell a track sometime in the future? Absolutely. Is it possible we might not sell a track in the future? Absolutely. Are we actively shopping for other tracks? No.

DRO: We've heard a lot about a possible Pro Modified Pro Class next year. Can you comment?

TC: Right now there is not a master plan in place for 2002 at all. We felt that Pro Mods are an exciting group of cars and a lot of people like to watch them. This year we identified several of our markets we thought would be interested in introducing Pro Mods. We put together a program showcasing Pro Mods as an exhibition category at five events this year. The first one was at Gainesville and the response we got was nice. To be honest, they are an exciting category. As I said though, our plan for them for next year is not finalized.

DRO: What is NHRA's position about major sponsors and finding major sponsors for Pro teams?

TC: Team sponsorships are the most important sponsorships; without teams we don't have a show. We really try to emphasize that in all of our discussions when we are putting together official deals. I would say that more than ever before, the majority of, if not all of, the NHRA sponsorships done lately have involvement with team sponsorship because it's generally a requirement. More and more we are trying to make a race team sponsorship a requirement if a company wants to involve itself with NHRA in an official capacity.

There's not an office inside of NHRA whose job is to find sponsorship for NHRA racers. In general it's everybody's job, and I can tell you that I have personally been out there making presentations on behalf of race teams.

DRO: Is the NHRA management trying to improve relationships with the teams?

TC: I think it (NHRA's relationship with teams) is better than it ever has been before. Right now I think more NHRA people are actively out there in the pit area, walking into the team trailers, talking, trying to understand the issues and trying to find out what we can do to help. We want to know what we can do to improve things. There are a lot more NHRA personnel roaming the pit area, talking, building personal relationships with people. There is more of a spirit of co-operation now than I have ever seen before in my years at NHRA.

In terms of "OK, we have these issues and we are aware of it," the next step is to sit down and work with the effective customer, in this case the race team, to solve the problem. NHRA can't solve all the problems, we don't have all the answers. But we have to be perceptive of the problems and we have to actively seek out the issues and talk. I think more than ever before NHRA is out there doing that.

Are we always going to make the right decisions? No. I think we are going to have a lot more better decisions because we are more in tune of the needs of our customers.

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