2015 Rules

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Billy Nees

Ya know, take away his trash talk and b##lbusting and Charliebob does have a good point. IMHO we really don't need any more new classes. It's just watering down the gene pool some more. NHRA reacted exactly the way that NHRA always reacts when they create a problem. Instead of admitting to creating a problem and fixing it, they just create another entirely different problem. They should have just taken a step back from the AHFS and fixed all of their factoring mistakes (old and new) in one shot. As it stands now, we are going to wind up with a "segregated" eliminator just like when we had all of the FI classes. The difference being, with the FI classes, when the factors got in line(relatively) they were brought back into the regular classes. That will not be as easily done with these new classes as they are combining sticks and autos and (I'm guessing) changing the indexes.
And maybe I should just keep my opinions to myself seeing as, of all the cars I own, none of them runs higher than P. Oh yeah, there are still some of those factoring mistakes bouncing around that can kick the snot out of my stuff.

Billy, the problem is that those cars, and especially the factory programs, simply don't fit in Stock, the way Stock is structured, and they cannot be made to. They don't really fit into Super Stock, either.

So, unlike the fuel injected production street cars, you'll never be able to merge them back into the regular classes, and it has nothing to do with them having stick and automatics combined.

So long as those programs continue, you will have paper cars built out of the parts catalogs, and intentionally assigned extremely bogus factors. It is the way those programs are designed and intended to work. It allows the factories to participate for the smallest possible investment, and still have their cars go extremely fast.

Since NHRA evidently has no desire to create one or two entirely new eliminators, the closest they can come to leveling the field is adding separate classes to the two existing eliminators for the factory programs. I'd love to see those cars truly separated, as much for their own benefit as well as for the rest of us.

The truth is, in a completely separate eliminator of their own, they could really be showcased, and do a lot of good for the factories and for drag racing. There is no telling what they could grow those classes into, there's almost no limit, provided it is done right.

The Super Stock version of a class like that could be the second coming of Pro Stock, much the way Pro Stock began, properly managed. Unfortunately, I don't think NHRA wants to do that, and I don't think they have enough of the right people to do it, and I expect the number of those people to continue to decline.