NHRA Nat`l event Quotas

[Rory McNeil]

Does anybody know how NHRA determines the car count quotas for the different classes at their national events? Being in Div. 6, we have only 1 nat`l event in our division, the next closest to me is Sonoma, which is 1200 miles away. Anyhow, in Stock, they allotted 50 spots, which to me seems pretty small, considering we often get about that many at a LODRS race. Stock filled up fairly quickly, yet S/S has only 16 cars entered, with 50 spots available, and Comp has 13 pre entered , with 40 spots available. I`ve been going to the Seattle Nat`l event since the late 70`s, and I can`t ever recall seeing anywhere even close to 30 Comp cars show up, let alone 40! Also, I don`t believe S/S has been very close to full in recent years either. To me, it would seem reasonable that since it is highly unlikely that either S/S or Comp will "fill up" in the few remaining weeks, that they could open up some more Stock positions. Is that unreasonable? Also, why do they choose an "uneven" car count number? In my mind, it would make more sense to allow, say 64 cars in Stock, and maybe 32 cars each in S/S or Comp, which is over twice as many as are currently pre entered. That way if the fields did fill up, it would eliminate a bunch of bye runs. Also, quite often a few "touring" class racers pre enter every event possible, but skip several of them, which results in classes that are no longer full, with several racers on the outside, looking in. Although parking at Pacific has been a zoo the past few years, it would still be nice to get into our only local National race! Your thoughts?