[Jason Oldfield]

Having the stands full is not about stroking my ego while I'm racing. When I'm on the track, I couldn't tell you whether there was 2 or 200,000 people in the stands. I'm just not paying attention to that.

But, with 2 people in the stands, our chances of EVER getting ANY additional money, respect, attention, etc. from NHRA is Z-E-R-O, ZERO! OTOH, if there are 200,000 people in the stands while we are racing, we have a lot more bargaining power. Remember, something like 75% of the revenue generated by NHRA was due to the paying SPECTATOR gate.

I will race regardless of how many people are there, as will almost all of you because we all love to race (and that is part of the problem - NHRA knows this and is using our passion against us). But, it would be a LOT nicer to have to fund less of my racing operation myself and have the paying spectator help defray those costs.

If the NHRA charged an extra $1/day per .90 class and passed that long to us, we'd have about an extra $30,000 in our purse on a given weekend. Why don't they do this? Because they perceive (most likely correctly) that the spectator would not see this as providing value to them. The sad truth is that if you gave the option to reduce the cost of the current spectator's entry fee by $10 for the weekend, but in exchange they could not watch the .90 classes from the stands when we were racing, my guess is that the overwhelming majority would take the discount.

So, all that said, we are NEVER going to see any beneficial changes with regard to our payout with the current format / rules of the .90 classes. The spectators have spoken, and they find our style of racing boring to watch (hence, the empty stands), and IMHO the downfall of these classes is due to the electronics and/or throttle stops. People don't want to watch cool, fast looking cars pull up to the line and drive away like my wife's minivan.

And you can't tell me that rules changes can't make this work. Have any of you seen the number of people sitting in the stands at a Pinks All-Out race? The quality of cars at these events isn't even close to what we have at the typical NHRA National Event in S/G & S/C, and as a whole the drivers couldn't hold a candle to the skill of the average driver in S/C or S/G at an NHRA National Event. Yet, fans still FLOCK to these events to watch these cars make passes down the track, even though the vast majority of the action they see in any one day is nothing but time trials.

What's the difference? These cars are running ALL-OUT. They even have breakouts, though they don't call them that, they say the car went "TOOOOO FAST" (said in my best Rich Christensen voice). Granted, it's more of a carnival atmosphere with the car show, swap meet, Joie Chitwoodesque stunt performers, but I don't think people are sitting in the stands waiting to see the next motorcycle stunt.

In the end, I love racing my car, and will whether you pay me anything or not at the end of the day. But, I can't say that I'm happy with the current state of racing with NHRA taking all of our money, and neither should any of you. But, the ONLY way that will change is if our classes change. I'm always looking for ways to make improvements whether it be in my personal life, profession, or racing operation, and doing the same thing over and over again is going to provide the same results. So, unless you're willing to make some type of change to put more butts in the seats, don't complain about entry fees, replacing seat belts, 3 year chassis tag certification expirations, mufflers, diapers, class quotas, grade points, HazMat rules, or anything of the sort because NHRA is holding all the cards, and they know it.

As an alternative, I would recommend running your local S/C, S/G, S/St series as they probably don't give a crap about your seat belts, chassis certification expiration, mufflers, diaper, grade points, or have any quotas or HazMat rules. Plus they cost a hell of a lot less to run, and they don't have all those pesky spectators in the stands to possibly distract us.

Soapbox mode off - I'm going back to lurking.

Let the flames begin...