[Charley Downing]

Bobby propose a new grade point system which he believe benefits racers and NHRA
All former World Champs and racers with 9+ grade points become Grade 0 and are guaranteed national event entry.
Grade 0 opens the week after Grade 1. This is the Wednesday 5 days prior to the Monday deadline.
Grades 8 to 1 entry schedule remains unchanged.
Racers in 2 classes will have the option to combine their grade points in attempt to reach a 0 in order to guarantee themselves one entry or take their chances entering 2 classes with the grade points they have in each class.
Racers would still have to run Divisionals and Opens to secure their grade points for the following year.
To prevent Grade 9+ and former world champs from "forgetting" to enter during their 5 day window, they will have the ability to enter when Grade 8 opens, but will not be added to the list/quota until Grade 0 opens.
Withdraw rules/deadlines remain unchanged. Grade point averages, hardship cases, etc. remain unchanged.
This reduces the need for saving/selling entries and rewards a loyal NHRA customer base who indeed invested lots of money and time by traveling to many races. It keeps them from having to sit on their keyboards at 8AM PST time and hope they are the quickest at keying in credit card numbers.



How could you/NHRA guaranteed national event entry to the current 150 plus racers with a 9+ grade and past world champs from the past 40-50 years, when NHRA has quotes of 60ish cars per class now? If NHRA did this that 150ish at 9+ currently number would jump to over 350 racers trying to get to a 9+ grade points to guarantee entry at all nationals. First off that is not even realistic idea. Its already a blood bath trying to enter now and NHRA love's it.

I'm not seeing it. Now racers are going to haft to enter more worthless points meet and terrible paying national opens to get 9 grade points instead of 8. Great if you live in D1 or D2 where you can pick up a ton of worthless national open grade points cheep, but for the rest of the world its a joke.

But I still don't see how this does anything to fix the real problem of guys saving/selling spots to friends/racers with low to mid level grade points?
That's the main issue with the system and has been for around ten plus years or so, when people first started to figure out how to scam the system. We see it all the time when racers with 6,7 and even 8 grade points get blocked or locked out of race's while someone with a lower total gets in due to spot holding.
A guy in D6 with 8 grade points or a past world champ can save a spot for a buddy for a race that's a crossed the country that he had no intension of racing at with zero penalty (there is a racer who does this at events east of the Mississippi river every year the past 3-4 years can anyone guy who it is?). I'm not mad at these people doing this. I think its pretty funny at times watching people beg for spots on class racer or Facebook. The best part is its always the same clowns year after year. Like you did not know these National events were going to fill up like they do every year LOL. Its basically allowed by NHRA because they don't want to do anything about it. So more power to these people that figured out how to use this in there advantage.

Come up with a solution to fix that. O wait someone on the SRAC committee did that 6-7 years ago and to quote the NHRA employee
(yea you don't understand, when the quota is full and we collected that money for the budget needed for that event we really don't care what happens next, you racers can figure that part out good luck).

NHRA doesn't care about this period.
Someone on Cassracer pretty much made a business model on here a year ago selling/holding spots for national events for racers without a grade 8. So what did NHRA do about this after it was brought to them by many on the NHRA staff and STK/SS SRAC members at that time?
NOTHING. NHRA did nothing to fix the issue big surprise.
(or is the Business Fake?)

We keep coming back, just accept it like some of us have. I mean they say they care but we all know deep down the truth. I mean come on guys, what is so much better now with NHRA SS/Stk then 10-15 years ago?
I love is sport as much as the next guy and the people in it. But its NHRA's deal and we the racer have never really had a voice on issues within our classes and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

This solution fixes the problem
64 car field at national events with 80ish car quota. Put the performance back in the class. But what about the people that don’t qualify after a few DNQ they will quit coming. Who gives a sh!t about those people. work on you combo or build a More economical slower class car that’s better on index. It’s a performance based class not bracket 1. Right now there are plenty of racers that will fill that spot at national events.
All Nationals events 64 car field but Indy stays 128
points meets stay at 128 car field
national opens all run.
Right now SS/STK is a performance based class with no reward for performance.

O one side affect from this the AHFS will actually work because people can't sand bag in qualifying if they want to race, they actually will haft to work and run cars all out to qualify for a national event, what a concept.
Pretty simple. NHRA makes more money on entry's, its takes a little of the bracket racing style out of the class and all nationals events are 6 rounds so TV time is not messed with.