Let’s Level The Playing Field By Dumping The “Television” Ladder

5/5/05

hose of you still faithfully following NHRA on cable must’ve enjoyed the rare excitement of the Bristol race. The disappointment of a crappy race track was outweighed, for me, by the many fuel-car upsets that resulted. Unfortunately, all those shiny new faces in the semis also reminded me how rare it’s become for anyone outside of a mighty, multicar team to go rounds.

At most national events, we’ve all watched the old excitement of qualifying and bumping degenerate into something of a formality, if not a joke. All too often, underfunded teams are forced to sit out one or more qualifying sessions while the big boys jockey for position in a high-dollar hail of fire and death smoke. Getting into the show is not the challenge that it was in the past, particularly for the last-surviving Top Fuel teams.

That’s as far you go, Joe! Alas, Sunday morning usually sends the bottom half of the field off to slaughter. On a better track than Bristol’s, what realistic chance does even a great driver in a 16th-qualified, 4.80 car have against a 4.40 car carrying some rich kid? As long as the current elimination ladder remains in place, the only way your favorite independent racer is likely to see the semi-finals is if his well-funded opponent from the upper half of the field either boils his balonies or burps his blower belt.

It hasn’t always been this way, you know. Blame it all on Larry Carrier — like NHRA did when Carrier’s IHRA dared to defy drag racing’s traditional ladder pairings (i.e., Number One meets Number Nine, and so on). Equally critical of the change were low-buck racers and their fans, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone reading this magazine. Their

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cries were drowned out by encouragement from the sponsors, sponsored racers, track operators and advertisers who stood to benefit from what some journalists derisively dubbed the “television” ladder.

In those early days of consistent TV exposure and — not coincidentally — unprecedented series sponsorship by Winston cigarettes, IHRA and NHRA event coverage started with the second round of eliminations. Because the low qualifier then drew the ninth qualifier (instead of Number 16), and so on down the line, it wasn’t unusual for the quicker qualifier to be upset in Round One by some local hotshot on a holeshot. This possibility had always seemed like a good thing for the sport, until television got involved. Instead of flying their sponsors’ colors on the tube, some superstars were on the trailer by the time the TV cameras rolled. This was not a good thing for first-round losers and their backers, nor for ratings (which traditionally drop off as the big names disappear), nor for advertisers either on the screen or behind the scenes; namely, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.

The other, unspoken reason why promoters hated to see a superstar taken out early — particularly by a little guy — is the guaranteed appearance money and hotel rooms once promised to popular racers. No matter where such a “bought-in” racer finishes, he’s paid no less than the guarantee, against his winnings.