[X-TECH MAN]

Originally Posted by Alan Roehrich

Billy,
With a normal quota of around 80 or so cars in either Stock or Super Stock, less than half of them will have anything but a single to win class. Outside of Indy, class rarely goes past 3 rounds, and that's normally only 1 or 2 classes.

It ain't that I don't want to see it done, it's just that I'm telling you what the television people are going to tell you. You have about 40-45 singles for class. Then you have 4-5 pairs for a class final in the first round of class, and a couple of classes, maybe 4, that have 3-6 cars,and take 2-3 rounds. You only have about 20 actual races, that last less than a minute per race. So you have 15-20 minutes of racing, with 20-25 minutes of "fill", and that's your 45 minutes of show for one hour of TV.

Sure, you and I find our friends and competitors, and their cars, interesting and entertaining. But most of them are not going to come off nearly as well on television as they are in person.

The production company is going to want to do a show at ONE RACE. And honestly, class eliminations at a National Event may not have enough for them. As much as you and I want it, they're not going to buy the idea that you can get people to watch interviews with class racers they've never heard of for 15-20 minutes out of one hour of programming, including 15 minutes of commercials.

Realize that I'm one of the crazy guys who not only paid the price for an entire weekend of pay per view National Event coverage when they did that, but I taped a lot of it. I'd love to see it done. But it'll be really hard to sell. If a "class nationals" type of event could be staged, where you have 150 or more cars in Stock and the same in Super Stock, then you have enough heads up class racing to get an hour or maybe even two of programming. But I don't see anyone getting enough from one class, with an 80 car quota at most events.

One reason WHY some of the classes need to be combined....stick/auto, 1 lb breaks, etc. class winners only in the eliminator. Get away from all this bracket racing and you might have something for TV. Right now there are way to many classes and to many by runs. OK now yell at me.