new A/FX CLASS

[Mark Yacavone]

My take is it's a great class in and of itself, but I don't see where it fits in, in the grand scheme of things.
They jumped right up and changed the rules to let the factory ringers in..anywhere they could .
They dominate qualifying in Stock, for the most part.
They are all over S/S too.
They brought them into Comp to pump that up.
The showdown cars were supposed to be the answer for fans who only want to watch heads up, flat out racing.
Now we've got a few F/X cars, so far (back in a minute)

As someone called it, Camaro Stock got out of control with the body mods and all the same power plants.
Are they going to phase it out in a few years? Do they want to? Do they like getting sued? Those guys aren't going to want to slow back down and run F/X.

Showdown cars are just a slower version of F/X, with automatics, to the guys in the stands. Do they want to phase them back out too? Without new cars to participate, might as well..They can get in on the lawsuit too.
Some of those guys are getting a little long in the tooth, you might say and are not going to want to move up to a Comp type stick shift class.

So where is this all going, except maybe to the lawyers?
Remember Pro/Stock Truck !

[Dan Bennett]

Interesting you mentioned PST. I was thinking of that situation the entire time I was writing my post.


I've stayed silent for a long time about how I felt about the class. Life is strange. I got assigned to write an intro article about them for Super Stock and the next thing I knew I was doing color commentary on them in the tower.

So, spilling the beans, I always thought it was the answer to a question the racers never asked. Not once did I ever hear it brought up.

It was the start, or at least a major jump, in the "money gets you anything" programs we've seen rise up through the years. Truck sales were getting hot, and the factories were on board and willing to throw some money at them. NASCAR had already done the same and back then it was monkey see, monkey do with NHRA brass following and adopting their programs as quickly as they could.

But other than the piles of money from the various makes, a tremendous amount of lobbying was being done by nonracers in the industry. Chassis builders led the pack, followed closely by anyone who made parts that would go on the things. I can't count the number of racers who made plans due to being told "It's a cheaper way to go Pro Stock/It's small block Pro Stock/you'll be racing in prime time/lots of sponsors wanting to jump in."

So people bought into that, most of the sales pitches didn't pan out, and it wasn't long before the stands would empty when the sessions started.

I think that situation is 180 degrees away from the new A/FX. I'm pretty sure people will once again like seeing production cars that they can buy (yes, in some cases it will have to be used for now) using highly developed production engines that will take an immense amount of talent to drive well.

[Billy Nees]

"In the grand scheme of things", NHRA really needs to shake up it's entire Professional program. The suits have been selling the same show with (mostly) the same people for years. I'm glad to see that they've finally given the Pro Mods a bigger part in the show to take advantage of the popularity of the street outlaws stuff which, realistically, are Pro Mod cars. And they (Pro Mods) pay their own way, don't they?
IMHO, NHRA should make the T/F and F/C engines much smaller and allow any type of engine to make things less generic and more interesting. And in F/C, go back to the old "engine make has to match the body" rule. Probably should do the same thing for P/S.
No, I'm not drinking........... just doing some brain farting.