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There’s that air of mystery and distance in NASCAR,
where a rabid fan’s only glimpse of his favorite driver
might be seeing his eyes through the corner of a visor screened
by a window net on a moving racecar or perhaps in an interview
on TV. Two women in their late forties standing on the terrace
bridge reacted like giggling school girls at the sight of
the #8 car backing out of the garage area for test laps, “OOOh
my God, it’s Junior” they said as both raised
their pocket digital cameras to shoot the rooftop of Earnhardt’s
Monte Carlo. These guys are like rock stars!
Drag racing doesn’t seem to offer that star quality
at any level. The sport doesn’t even attract Hollywood
stars anymore like Tim Allen, Christopher Titus or even a
car nut like Jay Leno! Couldn’t NHRA make one of those
guys the Grand Marshall at one of the Pomona races or at Sonoma?
At Fontana, two fully equipped video trucks, local NBC and
ABC affiliates with their microwave towers pointing at Mt.
Wilson were doing live cut-ins for the 5 o’clock, 6
o’clock news and 6:20 sports reports, ever seen that
in drag racing? In between live broadcasts I asked local on-camera
sportscaster Mario Solis from KNBC-TV in Burbank what kind
of “pecking order” there was for him to cover
an event. The KNBC Sports Producer’s first assumption
is that the event is held in Southern California and be of
interest to their viewers, then he defined an order of importance,
“it follows the basic food chain, even though we don’t
have a local football team, Lakers are number 1, then Dodgers
or Angels, then Clippers, college basketball and then at the
bottom of that list is motorsports, but especially NASCAR
since NBC has the Fall TV coverage.”
Solis had also reported at the recent Winternationals, however
he said he’d never been contacted by any member of the
NHRA Media Department. He was interested in drag racing because
a girlfriend of a friend had told him about an interesting
SoCal Sportsman racer angle for a TV story.
On his ability to understand the NHRA class and eliminator
structure Solis said, “I would say it was extremely
confusing, my first questions were what’s the difference
between one type of fuel and another. I didn’t know
the different divisions, like which one was the top division
in NHRA. It was confusing, but after asking some questions
it was a little more clear.”
When I asked him to name a few drag racers, the only names
he could recall was John and Ashley Force and Cruz Pedregon,
but he had no problem naming dozens of NASCAR drivers.
I noticed some enhancements NASCAR offered to attending journalists;
a full-time handler stayed close to Solis during his entire
visit at the Speedway. He was there to make sure that every
possible aspect of NEXTEL Cup racing was open and available
to that media representative. Later that day I met a NEXTEL
VP whose sole job was to interact with the media and open
doors to any journalist who needed help and provide access
to every part of the NASCAR experience.
This was the first NASCAR event I’d covered since the
2002 Infineon Raceway road race, but even as NASCAR has grown
exponentially, they have brought the media and journalists
along for the ride. There were well over 100 newspaper, magazine,
Internet, TV & radio journalists covering this 500-mile
event on Sunday. There aren’t that many media types
at any NHRA or IHRA National Event. Not even the U.S. Nationals.
While NHRA has grown in 2005 by adding three non-automotive
corporate sponsors during the off-season, there is still so
far to go. Rather than making comparisons to NASCAR, let the
Cup boys lead the way and open the doors to all motorsports.
If in fact NHRA drag racing is #2, then maybe NHRA and IHRA
should adopt as the old Avis Rent-A-Car slogan of “We're
#2 - we’ve got to try harder,” especially with
the media.
While I don’t profess to have all the answers, I’d
like to see every NHRA Public Relations representative and
members of the management team have to spend one race interning
behind the scenes at a NASCAR event to see how the guys they
are trying to be like do it. 
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