Re: New rules for 2010?
 

Sean
The year the indexes changed was 1993 I believe. I remember my first time out w/ my original car running GT/DA in '92 on a 10.60 index and literally doing cartwheels the first time I ran under it (a 10.57 if I remember correctly). I got my rear end kicked in class for a year or so before I figured out how to go fast and run with the guys who had been doing it a while. The next year, in 93 all the indexes were raised two tenths. That helped cars that could barely run the index then.... before that if the air got worse during the race they would have to dial the index and were "dead ducks" if they couldn't run the index.
Angelo D.

Re: New rules for 2010?
 

Dick
(I edited your quote just to save room)
Your 1st statement is not really true. You may or may not remember it but a few years back (and maybe someone can remember exactly what year it was 2000? 20001?) the NHRA gave HP back to a ton of motors, & not just chevy's. One of them was the 350/255 that I had run for a long time. As a matter of fact, when I first ran the 255 in '95, it was rated at 300hp. It was reduced to 295 when I ran it and was subsequently reduced to 290 during the round of hp reductions I am referring to. By that time I had moved on to the injected stuff...... there were a bunch of other combos that got hp back. I remember the 350/315 was reduced to 310. The 624 head motor was originally 285, then hit to 290, was put back to 285. There were several 327 combos that were lowered, some from 300 to 280 !.The NHRA did try to level the playing field because they had no AHFS (or it was just in the embryonic stages of development). Do you remember what combos where dominating then? The Chevy 400 rated at 275hp ! Which is now 325 I think. My point is those "classic or traditional refactored combos" were beat up by people who ran them and all have since been factored upward. They have no one to blame but themselves. The rules that exist have loopholes. They could have exploited them. If someone or a group choose to do what they can to protect the combo they run, well that's the way the game is played. I don't want to name specific combos because I don't play that way.... but there are a bunch of combos (that aren't necessarily chevy's) that milk the system without much fanfare. Either way money is always going to be a factor in this. No one should be spending the mortgage money or the kids college fund to field a competitive race car.