[Michael Beard]

Tim writes: >> Im still convinced that a U,,,V,,,or W car could make life very miserable for the 50k stockers

The Turismo may be out again next year... only ran one full season of Stock with it, and finished #11 in NHRA Div. 1. And I was still learning how the thing wanted to be driven! Won a few bracket races with it after that (even whacked a couple of Box cars), before jingling a rod. That was before LED's... it might have a decent spot on the tree shallow, now.

Mike writes: >> What was this vote about saving Modified, MIke?

The main question was keeping it a 32-car Qualified Field or making it All-Run. There was another question on it, but I can't remember what it was. Might've been making it National events only, or combining Divisions or something. Modified was doing ok in Div. 1 (Carolinas) and Div. 3 (Ohio/Michigan), but Div. 2, 4, & 5 were pulling 9 cars at divisional races. Whatever led up to that point (2000) was before my time. With fewer cars, it became harder to justisfy the purse. When purses went pro-rated, car counts dwindled even more. At that point, as Adger said, I don't think anything could've saved it.

Adger writes: >> I was told(by Bader himself) that the dragsters could & would change to Top Dragster & the others run .90 classes. The door cars would switch to Top Sportsman or a .90 class.

I was new at IHRA at the time, and didn't have any say, but that statement was pretty obviously not going to work!

One time Bader called me into his office and asked about paring the .90 classes down into two instead of three, something like an 8.50 and a 9.90. "You want to p*ss everybody off all at once?" He smirked, "Yeah, you're right" and never brought it up again.

I fought to keep deep staging maintained in the rulebook for as long as I was there. The year after I left, it was gone.