[MikeFicacci]

Gary's run at the Dutch was wicked fast. I think its safe to say that the steel heads make similar power to the aluminum if not more. That run was 1.122 under the index in some pretty serious air. I think the concept is pretty simple. Gary would probably not have run out the back door if the hit was 1.10 or 1.15 but a heads-up race is a different story. People seem to think that this is all about the new cars. Absolutely not true. The AHFS problem was simply magnified by these new cars. Should a 2002 Corvette LS1 be rated at 330 or 340 when the Camaro is at 370 (or whatever it is)? Should the LS1 with a stick be as low as they are? On the other side, should the Hemi still be as high as it is due to the Henson's run? Absolutely not.

Of course there is no perfect system for factoring all the cars but I think everyone can agree that the system is broken. A 5.7 Drag Pak with a stick in H is probably a 10.40 if not 10.30 race car. Should the sticks and autos be factored together? Maybe, maybe not.

Kent, as you know I have not been doing this very long but have been around it for a little while. You seem to be implying that I wouldn't want horsepower for my brothers' and fathers car but ya know what? If they are completely out of line from everyone else, they need horsepower. We don't want to win because we have some advantage on paper. We also don't want to lose for the same reason either. I remember when Gallina just about went as fast as he wanted in H/SA with the turbo Firebird. We can all agree the new cars need some hits but there are definitely some old (1960 to 2004) cars that need some horsepower also. Making the automatic hit realistic will hopefully bring some things in line.

Obviously NHRA is not going to hire staff to accomplish everything we want. At minimum, how about an open hood policy in the staging lanes? How about making a few guys that are running stupid fast pull a valve cover or pull the carb? Pulling a valve cover takes all of 3 minutes.

I see that people are against combining classes and I understand the reasoning. How about putting sticks and autos together? Especially now with the Pro-Trans and other lightweight pieces, the cars are pretty close for the most part. At any given time we campaign 3 stick cars and 2 auto cars so I hope people feel that I am being objective about it.

What about factored tracks? As the system works now you can't get horsepower but get to steal the national record from someone who had to find traction on a 10 degree track twice in a row? Is that fair?

I refuse to believe that NHRA can't find someone who cares about class racing to make a decision that is as fair as possible without the big wigs getting involved. I'm sure Travis or someone else would be happy to do it.