[Michael Beard]

Sorry, Won't be there. I'm not traveling 2000 miles round trip just so you Yankee boys won't have to travel more that 200 miles away from home.

Physically, Bristol is a pretty much even distance from everyone but we would travel to Bowling Green.

If the NHRA schedule is the same in 2014 as it is in 2013, then it would be on top of the Atlanta national event, in which case I expect the FL, GA, AL, SC racers would go to Atlanta. Again, it is impossible to make an event that is perfect for everyone. Even the US Class Nationals had an NHRA National Event on top of it.

Bristol is one of the top facilities in the country, and as such, has a commiserate rental fee, which makes it a non-starter. It would require a much higher entry fee and/or lower payout, which would in turn yield a lower car count, plus it is geographically in competition with a possible Atlanta event, which Columbus is not.

Columbus is not my favorite track, but this past Sports National race the track was the best I've ever seen it. With VHT and Redman it should be fine. I will be there also and if you need some help let me know.

The changes that the facility has made and having raced on it several times myself has given me that confidence. I believe they'll have two more solid NHRA events in the coming year that will establish that 'new Columbus'.

Kinda like herding cats isn't it?

That's a "push" vs "pull" mentality. Rather, you put the warm milk out there -- if the interest is there and you've done your job properly, you have success. If the interest is not there, we'd all find something else to do on that weekend, like we've done every year since the US Class Nationals. My goal is not to be a race promoter for a living. I got into race promotion when an extremely popular, long-running annual event was deleted from the schedule. Racers wanted it back, and no one else would do it, so Anthony Walton and I partnered up to bring it back. The following year, the same thing happened with another popular event, so we picked that one up. We now have 3 big money bracket race weekends on the schedule for 2013. Adding a class nationals event in 2014 would bring the total to 4, and that's *plenty*. Having done three major events now, I'm fully aware of just how much time, effort, and money goes into these things behind the scenes. Even after working numerous Bracket Finals events for IHRA over the years, in any number of positions, I discovered that it falls under "You think you know, but you have no idea." The reward comes at the end of the weekend when your customers leave with a smile on their face and a "Thanks, we had a great time." You deserve to have that experience.

Mike...before you put the stamp on Ohio...why not consider Earlville?

I've definitely heard good things, no doubt. For an inaugural event, in addition to staffing logistics, I'm looking at being able to draw heavily from Div. 1 and Div. 3, while being within fair reach of Div. 5. Quite simply, that's where the bulk of the cars lie. Starting out in Div. 5 would likely gain far fewer cars from the west than the event would stand to lose from Div. 1. If the first attempt doesn't live, there won't be another one. Remember too that unless you get 128+ car fields in both Stock and SS, the event is unlikely to stand on its own. There is an existing base of No-Box cars that are asking for the return of a $5K event in this area, and that's what's going to make it possible to have the event. At this point, I have no working knowledge of possible "support classes" that we can successfully run in conjuction with S/SS in Iowa. You need something strong enough to pay a large portion of the track rental, but not something that's going to overburden track time for the S/SS customers. If we exceed expectations in 2014, then you may have something to work with in the future. I will try to get to Earlville myself in the coming year and check it out. But again, unless the track rental quote gets adjusted out of the realm of feasability, that is where I would like to start.

Many promoters probably wouldn't get into this kind of detail and discussion, but something that was instilled in me by Bill Bader is that as a promoter, I will always give you not only "what" a decision is, but most importantly "why" it was made.

With the tentative date on the same weekend as Atlanta's customary National event weekend I guess D2 racers will have an easier choice although Atlanta has never been my favorite track.

I made my first trip to Atlanta last year, and I liked the place, quite a lot, actually. I believe that they recently put Jim Mcelvey in charge there: he's a racer and a good guy. I may hit the double-header there this year. When I was looking at scheduling, I saw this, but after researching their attendance, I don't see a conflict. The attendance was low in both classes (38 Stock, 33 Super Stock), and only a handful were northern teams. Both Atlanta and Columbus are NHRA-owned facilities, so if there is an issue, we will figure that out very soon. The NTR staff is already checking into it.