We need a new "instant" trigger!

[Mike Carr]

I had posted something similar to this in the Top Stock forum, but I will repeat it. How does one tell if a car has a fair factor on it or not? Obviously people like Billy Nees, Bob Shaw, Mark Yacavone, etc can tell if a combo has great, so-so, or poor potential. The average racer probably doesn't, in regards to the oddball combinations. I don't have the stats on Bob's Cadillac, but I will use his previous car. L/FIA (then, it's now V/SA) '85 Caprice 262/130 factory, NHRA 155. Until someone builds one, who knows if it would run two seconds under, or only .75-.80 under. Fair factoring is a must, but I don't believe a racer should be penalized for choosing to run a rare/odd/whatever you want to call it combination until the HP penalty is warrented. Not everyone wants to build/buy/race a 302 Mustang, 305 Camaro, late model EFI GM F-body, 396/375 Camaro, etc. Last year, my mother bought a 2000 Monte Carlo. 231 cid, 200 factory, 200 NHRA. One of the above racers may build one for BF/S (14.95 Index). It may run 14.20 or 13.20. How would anyone know if 200 is fair, soft, or hard?

I do agree the AHFS, in it's current state, will never work, and/or take many years to sort out a severely under-rated combination. Here's another problem. Some of us would (maybe) like to see the -1.40 and -1.15 triggers lowered, maybe to, say, -1.25 for automatic HP and -1.00 for the trigger to be evaluated. This would speed the process up of factoring soft combinations.. But, the racers that like to go fast in class, or try and qualify #1 will likely not want these triggers. Plus some combinations that are correctly factored (not soft) will get hit with more HP. If we leave them alone, as I mentioned, it will take quite a while to factor certain combinations, especially if the driver(s) are smart about it. Same things if we were to lower the Indexes, as some have wanted, and left the triggers alone. And, if they were to lower the Indexes AND the triggers, you would have changed nothing, and just made it tougher for some lower-buck racers to qualify and/or run the Index. Lots of issues, and unfortunately, I don't have the answers to make it better, let alone perfect.