Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Roehrich
The lack of participation has nothing to do with the lack of available and attractive combinations.
Adding even more classes, and another level of difficulty in factoring will not help participation.
Let's leave the economy and expense out of it to for the purposes of this discussion, at least for now.
It is a lack of ambition, attitude, competitiveness, and drive.
Explain any Stock Eliminator class, in either sanctioning body, to most other "racers", who don't know the rules, and watch the look of shock, dismay, and disbelief. Their eyes will glaze over in about 30 seconds. Most of them will then ask you why you are stupid enough to work that hard and spend that much, to go two seconds slower than they do.
For the most part, the vast majority of "racers" today want to be able to buy all the speed they want, without a great degree of difficulty, bolt it together, and go.
That applies especially to the vast majority of the younger crowd.
If they can't buy bigger heads, more cam, more nitrous, or more supercharger, they have no desire to race.
Assemble your Stock Eliminator engine in full and plain view of most of them. The pieces are so boring to them they'll ignore it all after a minute or two, and they won't understand what they see.
The only things that will interest them in a Super Stock engine are the epoxy and welding in the ported heads, and the high end valvetrain.
|
I think Alan nailed the mindset of the majority of current drag racer, especially younger ones. If they actually were to build an engine, (instead of buying a turnkey crate motor), chances are it would have a low buck stroker kit and aftermarket heads, and often a "power adder". Look in any ND, ReherMorrison, Schafiroff, or several other big name engine shops can sell you an all aftermarket 700-800 HP engine for less than a typical good Stocker engine. 1000 HP for less than a S/S engine.
Also, it seems that the young guys in our area are not really into actual eliminataion racing. They would much rather pay less entry, get more runs, by entering the "Street Legal" races. When a few have ventured into a weekly ET bracket race, they usually lose 1rst round, and bitch that they don`t get to run anymore that day. And forget about playing with jetting or cam timing, if it won`t net them at least 1/2 second, they couldn`t be bothered. Much easier to add a blue bottle in the truck.