[Billy Nees]

OK, I've put on my Impact! fire retardent underwear so here I go. Bruce, are you listening? The AHFS (in my humble opinion), although it has many flaws, has one BIG flaw that needs to be fixed as soon as somebody in Glendora wakes up. A trigger needs to be in place to fix "Factoring Mistakes" more quickly. I would like to see the -1.40 number used not to give a 3.25% bump to a combo but to "slap" it back to reality. I hate to be aiming this in Bobs direction but when a combo has the rest of the field covered by that much something has to be in place to let NHRA make a drastic HP change.
For some reason, NHRA has never been able to get a handle on factoring combos dating all of the way back to the early 70s when the manufacturers started using "net" HP ratings. From the early 70s through (my guess) the release of the LT-1 in 93 NHRA would assign a HP number to a combo based on a "comparison" to an existing combo (X-Tech Man, elaborate?). When the LT-1 was released, the factor became 275 which is what the factory rating was. The rating after 18 years now stands at 325? and it's still a good combo (Bobby Warren #1 @ Gators). By the time the Caddy was put in the guide (no it hasn't been there for 30 years) NHRAs policy had become one of accepting whatever the factory rating is. If you compare Bobs 77 350 Caddy/Olds to a 77 350 Olds, you'll find that the Olds was immediatly factored from 170 to over 250 (it has been defactored to 250) based on earlier Olds combos.
This is getting too long and rambling, to close I would just like to see the -1.40 trigger used to give under factored combos a "slap" instead of a "bump".
Please Bob, don't take this personally as it's not meant to be.