Effects of New Indexes

[Jeff Teuton]

There are now 64 classes in Stock and a whopping 109 in Super Stock. That is 173 classes. Does the term Diversity that NHRA has used for Comp Eliminator come to mind? That has really worked well. The Combo races have just gotten to be the race of the century. For the fortunate guys in the old GT with new cars or new motors or both, there are 10 new classes for the 16 cars affected. Makes sense to me. There are also 13 new classes for Super Stock which for SS/DA and faster makes no difference. From the old SS/EA to SS/KA the hit starts with one tenth hit for the new SS/EA (F/SSG) is from 10.35 down to 10.25 (and .05 slower than the class above which did not get a hit) and gets to SS/KA (F/SSM) from 11.25 to 11.00. That is like having Larry Hill as a passenger in your car. For those that don't know Little Larry, he is a 6'8" child of questionable lineage, but I digress. NHRA just rolled the new cars into their own class (OK, maybe we need some after shave anyway) and just used the stick shift indexes. There is not one GT/Stick new car or new motor car out there; none. There are only two I think from the old SS/EA to SS/KA and NHRA used up 13 classes on those 70 or so cars. I don't think NHRA looked at the changes to indexes that were just applied with a pencil. At least they didn't initially. After multiple correspondence by your humble correspondent they were advised of the error of their ways. No result. More later.

[Ed Wright]

Wondered how long this would take you Jeff. :-)

[Dan Fahey]

Why so many changes?
The new Letters are confusing!

[Nitro Joe Jackson]

all I know this is going to make the stats book have more pages (more classes)

[Mike Pearson]

Originally Posted by Dan Fahey

Why so many changes?
The new Letters are confusing!

The new combos were dominating the classes that they were in and the top of the qualifying sheet was mostly the new combos. NHRA decided to create the new classes to separate the new factory race car combos from the older traditional type cars. I guess thy figure this was a better solution than either raising the HP on the factory race cars or lowering the HP on the traditional combos. I guess we will see how this plays out.

[Ed Wright]

Other than class run offs, and fewer heads ups, why are they all so unhappy? The bracket racing part against everybody else is still the same, right?

[Bryan Worner]

Just a gut feeling here that the cars in the new classes will find a way to make up that tenth.

[Ed Wright]

At least. LOL

[Jeff Teuton]

Just a gut feeling that this is the start of dial in heads up in eliminations. With that many classes, the heads up are going away very fast. No tech, no nothing. A few years ago the trend was lower the number of classes. So the trucks in stock disappeared, then the EFI classes disappeared. Now 173 total classes. Where am I going wrong? Class might wind up being a giant combo, but with AHFS. Then some of Comp will roll into Super Stock and add some more classes. Could easily happen.