[Alan Roehrich]

On the other hand, Dick, give the FWD racers their due. There will likely never be enough of them to get transmission ratios and final drive ratios made other than what is sold by the factory. That is true, and will likely remain true. In that area, and in weight transfer, they do have a distinct disadvantage that they will likely never overcome. Jim is quite correct, they cannot compete in the same weight class, at least not now, and likely never. Maybe they can be merged at a special weight break, and maybe they can't. And I am not saying they should be.

However, NHRA has consolidated classes in the last year or so already, and if all these people saying NHRA is looking to cut classes, they might be eliminating or merging other classes.

IF NHRA wants to reduce the number of classes, they have several options.

1. They could merge stick and automatic classes. The RWD racers are by far the majority, and the outcry would likely be pretty substantial, even the stick racers are fairly large in number.

2. They could take the 1/2 pound weight breaks in the upper classes and merge them to 1 pound weight breaks. The 1/2 pound weight break classes are AA thru N. There are a LOT of cars in those classes, and a lot of them will be very unhappy, and very vocal about it.

3. They could either merge the FWD cars, or eliminate them. There are fewer of them than there are in either of the other groups and options above. On the one hand, there's a good side to that. They only cut 5 classes, either way they go, merge or eliminate, so they don't make much progress in reducing classes, so doing something with FWD classes may not make enough of a difference for them to bother. The flip side of that is there are relatively few cars in those classes, and few racers, so they will not have nearly as much outcry if they get merged or cut. Which is why they are so defensive, and I can understand that.

4. They could do some combination of the above.

Now, I'm not advocating ANY of the above ideas. I'm not even one of the ones who proclaimed that reducing classes was NHRA's goal after the latest rule. I do not know whether they are or not for sure, but like I said before, I have "heard' they are.