CLASS RACER FORUM - New IHRA President

Quote:

Originally Posted by j gardiner (Post 496192)

Go back to dragracecentral look at the races in 09, they were still 8 car qualified fields.

Well, you definitely nailed me to the wall on that point, Mr. Gardiner. Good job. Somehow, I got the 2009-2010 years swapped but that’s no excuse. I was wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by j gardiner (Post 496192)

Look up NHRA's testing ban it says that any runs made at any track regardless of sanction will count towards a test day. The reason they state was because of the poor economy, no mention of anything to do with a shortage of nitromethane.

This is correct for the 2009 season. However, the Testing Ban actually began in 2008, (as stated), because of the global shortage of Nitro:

http://www.dragracecentral.com/DRCSt...ilter=Year2008

http://competitionplus.com/drag-raci...d-on-nhra-tour

This was precipitated by the $100,000 fine imposed on Don Schumacher for violating the NHRA’s new rule banning teams from stockpiling nitro fromsources outside the NHRA official supplier:

http://www.dragracingonline.com/anal...umacher-1.html

Concerning the 2009 ban which limited testing to four days during the season, it’s important to remember the penalty from the NHRA for noncompliance was merely the forfeiture of NHRA Full Throttle points. There were no monetary fines nor declined entries; the NHRA had plenty of short fields in 2009 and 2010. Since the Full Throttle fund paid only the Top Ten finishers, this wasn’t a concern to teams outside the elite.

An interesting fact is, of the twenty-two different Top Fuel drivers who competed in the 2009 IHRA series, all but FIVE of them, (Mitch King, Rhonda Hartman-Smith, Smax Smith, Paul Lee and Fred Farndon), competed at NHRA events in the same season. In fact, nine drivers competed in more than eight NHRA races in 2009 while still competing in the IHRA tour.