NHRA St. Louis Blues
By Glen Grissom
7/7/06
went to the St. Louis NHRA event with great expectations: getting up close for the awesome spectacle of nighttime fuel car qualifying; getting to roam the pits and staging lanes with our veteran dragger boss Jeff Burk to meet many of the racers and teams; and generally soaking up impressions of a top rung professional drag race from outside the press box. What follows are my impressions from this one national drag event – YMMV.
The first item you notice when driving up is that the nearby Gateway stock car racing track stands dwarf the dragstrip and its stands – an all too visible sign of the motorsport times. Next, you notice the heat and that the dragstrip seems to be located below sea level. If Hell had 99% humidity it would be called St. Louis in the summertime. It didn’t seem to faze any of the fans, who showed up despite the swelter; in particular one combating the depletion of precious bodily fluids by wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “Drink Your Beer, There Are Plenty Of Sober People In India.” Sort of what you’d expect from an historic brewing city like St. Louis, home of Budweiser. They had a corporate contingent there the size of a small army to see if Brandon Bernstein could bring home the glory in Top Fuel. It was not to be, as he lost in the final.
Maybe it was the heat, or the racers were ready for their mid-season break and worn out from the grind, but it sure didn’t seem like many competitors were having much fun here. In my mind, a bad day drag racing sure beats working, but I haven’t been drag racing for 20 years either. Of course the Death Valley-temps made the track a wheel-spinning, tuning nightmare during daytime qualifying, and generally had everyone a bit testy, despite the best track prepping efforts available – which seemed marginally effective. The humbling nature of drag racing doesn’t care how big your name is: Doug Herbert, and Warren and Kurt Johnson failed to qualify.
For grins, I took an informal poll among the racers and crews cooking in the staging lanes, asking assorted ones, “Anybody having fun?” I was lucky I didn’t get to eat a wrench. Mostly, I got a lot of bemused stares that dissolved into sardonic laughter. There wasn’t much excitement in the air.
The fans were a different story; they looked like they were having a grand time every day (might be due to the consumption of adult beverages). The best midway and pits in U.S. motorsports are at an NHRA drag race and must have contributed to their euphoria. Whoever is in charge of getting all those interactive exhibits and racing vendor stands involved and laid out deserves recognition – you couldn’t get from the stands to the pits and back without passing through the entertaining and cash-magnet midway.
Plus, it’s enough to make you mist up when a young fan comes up to their hero driver for an autograph because of the access at these events. As no-nonsense and forthright (some might say taciturn) as Whit Bazemore can be with the press and other competitors (the guy flat out hates to lose and has a low tolerance for BS), I saw him take the time to sign a young guy’s hero card and make small talk with him. The kid’s feet barely touched the ground as he walked away.
That said, the stands were never in danger of being full during qualifying or finals. The night qualifying brought out a bigger crowd than the finals, if Burk’s and mine and DRO photog Ron Lewis’s calibrated eyeballs are anywhere near accurate. But that makes some sense because that nighttime show is not to be missed, and the finals are a bit anticlimactic if your team is trailered. But you owe it to yourself to be at a track when fuel cars blast through the dusk and dark, with header flames so high you again know that a dragster is just a bomb on a stick with a pilot lighting the fuse.
I spent Saturday’s laps working off-track on articles for DRO’s coming online sister magazine, MaxChevy, so I got a chance to watch the tape-delayed laps on ESPN2 that night and compare the telecast with the reality of the track racing. I was impressed by the ESPN2 crew and their show, and think that NHRA drag fans sure get their money’s worth from them – actually more sometimes than the fans at the track do from the on-track race.
Why would I say that? For one point, at St. Louis there were some long delays between rounds as the track was getting re-prepped or whatever, and I can’t remember any of the announcers explaining the delays and exhorting the fans that they might want to take a break from crisping like ants under a magnifying glass, and go visit the midway for hats, T-shirts, and cold beverages. If you can believe it, the event seemed boring, which to me is inexcusable. If you can make drag racing boring, you deserve your fate.
Track announcer Bob Frey is probably the most informed and understatedly animated announcer in all of motorsports – the guy can remember who won which round at a drag race from 10-plus years ago – and he brings plenty of great and sly commentary to an event. But even he can’t superhumanly carry a drag race by himself from the announcing booth, and thank whoever trained him that he doesn’t resort to “Boogity, Boogity, Boogity” to fake excitement.
Somebody get off the hip and pay for some sort of on-track entertainment between these brain-numbing delays or between rounds so the fans think that someone cares they paid their money to be entertained in the stands, and another $20 for parking. Put up some flame and fire highlights on the JumboTron (Cory Mac has given you a few). Bring in some wheelstanders, or jet cars trying to roast scurrying Shriners in their mini-carts. But at least impart some sort of connection between the fans and the sanctioning organization that the latter is glad you paid your money. Lobbing T-shirts into the crowd just doesn’t do it.
As for the late night telecast on Saturday, I have to say I was pleasantly shocked by how good it was. Now, I’ll declare up front that it is nearly impossible for me to associate announcer Paul Page with drag racing – his voice and knowledge is so linked with Indy-type cars it hurts his credibility with me, (Sort of how some of you readers think my extensive circle track background hampers me.) The fact that he is matched with Mike Dunn is the prime liability for Mr. Page, because Dunn is absolutely top class and credible to the drag racing viewer.
He’s the best former-racer analyst telecasting today – lively without being cloying; you sense he really cares about what happens on the track; has the knowledge and skills to correctly and fairly interpret it; and the ability to help the viewer understand. Totally believable. I’d get him signed to a very long-term drag racing TV contract. The more Page tosses the commentary to Dunn the better the telecast will be.
And secure for the long-term whoever is doing the producing and editing of this show – they get it. You get a full sense of the drama of drag racing – the camera angles are great, the opening segments are in-your-face and entertaining, and the graphics and music jack up the telecast. Nice work y’all.
Back out at the track on Sunday, it felt like, as one old-time crew chief told us in the lanes, “Drag racing is a game for 20 year olds!” The finals weren’t exactly racers (and journalists) going through the motions, but you could tell the excitement level had dropped a notch among the racers and the crowd. Maybe it will pick up after the points races tighten up some more. But I’d still look into re-scheduling the race to a more hospitable locale in June. Say, Alaska..
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