The Demise Of Class Eliminations

[Billy Nees]

Originally Posted by GUMP

I really don't understand why you guys are going out of your way to justify the NHRA's decision to drop one of the few things that make what we do stand out.

Daren, NHRA's decision is based on it's own time constraints and Class Elimination's relevance. It's just not relevant to run when you have a 50-60 car field. There's nothing that "stands out" about a handful of classes with a couple of cars and "combo" eliminations. At least not to me.
I always enjoy running class and I wish that I could do it more often than I do but as I've said on here before I don't like running Natl. Events anymore. I DO enjoy the Sportsnationals concept and I wish that NHRA would take a serious look at running class at certain Div. Events where the car counts would make Class Eliminations relevant again OR have more Sportsnationals Events.

[GUMP]

Originally Posted by Billy Nees

Daren, NHRA's decision is based on it's own time constraints and Class Elimination's relevance. It's just not relevant to run when you have a 50-60 car field. There's nothing that "stands out" about a handful of classes with a couple of cars and "combo" eliminations. At least not to me.
I always enjoy running class and I wish that I could do it more often than I do but as I've said on here before I don't like running Natl. Events anymore. I DO enjoy the Sportsnationals concept and I wish that NHRA would take a serious look at running class at certain Div. Events where the car counts would make Class Eliminations relevant again OR have more Sportsnationals Events.

That's all good. I still prefer the watered-down version of Class Eliminations at Nationals over none.

[StockerStang912]

Darren - I do think you make a lot of good points and there should be long-term concern about the viability of performance-based S/SS racing. The reduction of class events to roughly 10% of NHRA national/divisional/open events next year and less than 5% of elimination rounds likely being head-to-head (pure guesstimation) sort of leaves qualifying as the primary vehicle for trying to run fast.

I don't have a solve, but for someone on the young side of the class racer bell curve (I'm 36 and 10 years into S/SS), would strongly push to have more class runoff frequency at divisional or national opens and reduce class count so there's more opportunity for heads-up racing. Associations like CCRA are fantastic and the vast majority of what we've run due to the people and fun factor, but there's still limitation on performance since it's essentially a dial-in program.

There's plenty of younger folks involved in drag racing, and while the participation % of the population is lower than it was 50 years ago, the absolute number is there it's just not active in S/SS or NHRA in general. With multiple other mediums available to race today, it's challenging to convince someone to spend $30K+ on a 11-second Stocker that requires extensive travel to primarily bracket race when they could run 160mph in a dragster or 10s in a Drag N' Drive car.

I love class racing because of the strive for performance and hope to stay involved for the impending future, but do think it's a long transition to pure bracket racing if we don't find more opportunity to generate sustainable head-to-head competition.

[Frank B.]

JMHO Class racing and event qualifying at divisionals and nationals should be no ahfs. Give people chance to run cars to potential. Ahfs would be in eliminations only. Also class at national events and divisionals would have no combo class. If you had a single for class give out a wally. I mean most people are paying $300 or so entry at nationals and a little less at divisionals that is only fair. With that being said I know there is not a chance NHRA would accept that.