Quote:
Originally Posted by Chad Rhodes
It is the person, not the car. But it just seems that more serious racers (even young ones) choose domestics, while the "hey look at me crowd" tends to choose imports. I'm not saying that that sums up all import racers, however they have that image and they need to overcome that if they want to be taken seriously by old school racers then they need to separate themselves from that mentality and those who promote it. NOPI was a traveling spring break side show, that happened to center around cars. It was never, nor will ever be taken seriously as a racing venue. I think THAT is the major issue that confronts import racers. The have to separate themselves from that image.
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I raced in the NOPI/NDRA series for a couple years in early 2000's. It was a lot of fun. If you can't have fun at the track with FAST cars racing, boobies, foam pits, drifting, car show, etc. you aren't a real happy person. Yes, it was definitely a freak show, but I had fun. And everyone I went with had fun. That's what it's all about. It drew in a lot more spectators than class racing too, unfortunately.
Honestly, it was a lot more exciting that watching a ton of 10-12 seconds cars that all look the same go down the track, all while complaining about how horrible NHRA is even though they have other options to go racing in. I mean you had the 6 second PRO RWD import, high 7 second PRO FWD cars, high 7 low 8 second PRO 4 cylinder (fwd) cars, mid 9 low 10 second all motor cars. And the couple years I raced in the series it was competitive, had a good turnout, etc
We only had one, and that was NOPI. I'm glad there were there otherwise I'd just be taking my car to the local test and tunes, getting made fun of by all the domestic guys because they are all better....haha. Even though I was running 9's and there were all in the 10's and 11's.
That said, the reason NOPI fail was they let GM and Dodge come in, much like Ford and Dodge is doing in stock, and run all the privateers/sportsman type racers out. I have a strong opinion about that, much like most on here towards what they do. I lived through the NOPI series, I raced in it, saw it do great and watched it fail. And honestly that's what started the down ward spiral.
If you really care to hear....haha.