[Ed Carpenter]

Originally Posted by Alan Roehrich

What you're suggesting is just untenable.


Who decides what is "uncompetitive"? Because there's a lot of stuff out there that is being seriously sandbagged.


At Indy, you'd be rewarding people for searching for a single for class and avoiding a race.


And if you void the indexes, and run off records, what do you do where there's a "class minimum" instead of a record?


Who is going to tear down and tech all of these newly minted record holders?



If you start qualifying and racing off the record, your field will shrink dramatically, and rapidly.




Sorry, what you're suggesting just isn't viable, from the racers' side, or from NHRA's side.




Again, the simple solution, that doesn't keep anyone from qualifying because they can't run under a new indexes, is to leave the indexes alone. Just adjust at least the review trigger in the AHFS to a combination average of 1.00 under.


If you really wanted to increase performance as a factor, again, without reducing the indexes so that some who can currently qualify couldn't, is to start paying real money and real points for qualifying and for class eliminations.For those chasing money and championships, they're going to step up their performance, and maybe even move to a class with a few more cars. This will also drive the AHFS to correct combinations that are way soft, because people are going to try to take advantage of those in order to collect points and dollars.


By doing that, you substantially change only qualifying and class eliminations, while leaving regular eliminations changed only by the impact of a few people adjusting their class to score points and/or money. So people not able to run very far under still get to participate, they can qualify, and they can run the "dial in" eliminations.

Alan If u remember, I put a proposal together to nhra about getting back to Performance in s/SS. It involved qualifying points, points and money for records, class racing contingency money and several other ideas. I was told by Glen Gray they would look at it. Then he said he put it to our SRAC reps and they didn’t want it so it died there. I plan on trying again at the end of the year. To many racers today don’t want to do anything but run the eliminator and do nothing else. No class, no records nothing. We’re supposed to be in a performance class and it’s no where near that now. We won class at Houston in April and it felt great to out run a few guys. I live for that stuff but not many do. It’s kinda sad really.....