Mid-year horsepower posted @ nhra.com

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Hagen Gary

Nobody wonders why. Its way to hard to get someone to put up more money than what is offered at a NHRA National. Then you got to get a few good tech people, or have no heads up. Alot of people wont show if there are no heads up. Then its just a another big bracket race. People who want to do that just buy a .90 car and race both big money and NHRA. So once again, To be competative, the cost vs reward for s/ss is way worse than .90 cars. Don't you notice how many SC cars show up vs SS? They can put together a whole racing program for less than We have in our car. Then they don't have to worry about working on thier S!*t or having no shot of winning 5-7% of the time. Cost vs Reward. Seriously do the #s. If everyone can't get together on this point, to hell with trying to get people to agree to Qualifying and Record points, which I agree we should have. Sure would help the AHFS.

If you haven't noticed, there isn't much money available at NHRA races. The purse hasn't gone up in about 15 years ($300 to enter for Stock for a car, driver, 1 crew or family, and $1500 to win?), and the contingency money has dropped 60% to 75% in the last 4 years. There are about 1/3 as many companies paying contingency money as there were in 2006, if there are that many. I'm not talking who is listed in the ND, I'm talking about who is writing good checks and mailing them.

A new or good used dragster to run S/C is about as expensive as a rolling Stock Eliminator car. And all of those 555, 598, 620, and 632 Big Chief headed dry sump big blocks are not free. It ain't as cheap as you think. And S/G ain't no cheaper.


If the racers would show up, instead of whine, you could get several of the companies to put up some money. For the $200-$400 it costs to get in to an NHRA race, with one car, the same entry fee paid to a decent track operator for a 64 car field will generate a pretty decent purse, considering Bowling Green will be hosting a combo and paying $1K to win off of 50 or so cars at $50 to enter.

Now Bowling Green does have help from Comp Cams and TCI, which the racers greatly appreciate, how ever much they are spending. And yeah, they have heads up races in those combo races.

If Comp and TCI will help Bowling Green put on 4-5 combo races that draw maybe 50 cars, I'm sure they, and/or other companies would be willing to at least consider another program, especially if it were bigger, and covered a broader market.

There are companies that run their own contingency programs featuring a lot of the companies that class racers buy parts from, if you had an association with $100 members that paid $25 in dues, you could buy into one of those programs to pay contingencies for 4-5 races.

Example: $200 entry fee x 64 entries is $12,800. Pay to the semis @ $2K to win is $4K, leaving $8800 out of the entry fee for the track. Now, figure that for two classes at 64 cars, running both Stock and Super Stock as separate classes. That's $17,600 for the track for 2 64 car fields after paying the purse, not counting spectators, or concessions.

If the scheduled date of the races was done well, I'd bet 2-3 good tech guys would show up for $100 a day plus expenses. That's about $600 or so a piece, you'd need 2-3.

Those are just ballpark figures, not anything written in stone, take them for what they are worth. But if you're hoping it will get anything but worse until the racers do something about it, you don't have much hope.