Ford First "Stocker" Into The Eights

[abongi]

Originally Posted by Bruce Noland

Anthony,

I applaud your success in life. We fully understand the amount of work it takes to make a car fast and enjoyable.

Let's take a quick look at one of your team cars that you shipped south this winter. It picked up 22 horsepower in just two races and it still has a ton left. I am pleased to see that you allow your drivers to run these cars as they please. But you can plug in a new engine combination at any time and continue to run over top of the traditional Stockers for years to come. Yes, we know and enjoy hard work, however, these new cars are not breaking anybody's back to go fast.

Dave,
Citing prior transgressions by nhra does not make this one right.

Jack,
What did you say? Smoke and ah shucks is not going to make this problem go away.

Finally, the ahfs is a joke and all the nhra types hide behind it to say "hey look these cars are picking up Horsepower." But like the car I noted above, the ahfs is a bandaid over a gapping performance wound. This car is making twice the amount of it's nhra rated Horsepower. Anthony can confirm the real horsepower number for this car if he wishes to be honest with the racers.

Bruce, I just want to point out that the same motor you are talking about was originally in my 2008 stocker in 2009 and I was not making enough HP to be competitve with anything. It took us 2 years before we were making enough HP with that motor to put it back in a race car and we stood on it in Gainesville and Belle Rose. I don't disagree that the new cars run fast, but it doesn't just happen by itself.

If you look at the supercharged motor in my 2008 stocker, we were running 9.90's and 10.0's when it came out, and that was everything it had. We have worked real hard at figuring out what makes these motors tick and its been a big effort in getting to the low 9's. Getting there has been far more work than simply dropping a motor in a car.

The advantage that the new cars have is not so much that the motors are so fast out of the box. The advantage is that since the combinations are relatively new, incremental gains can be large as development is done. I have broken and blown up more motors than I would care to admit, but we have learned something each time we have done it.

As far as the AHFS is concerned, it may not be working as fast as you would like, but in my estimation, its working quite well.

[boster]

Congrats to Don Fezzel and team he did real good . It's not easy to do what he did or what Anthony's been doing . I had enough motor this week to do the same thing in stock but we could not get the car to hook up . All of the D1 guys are working real hard to get the cars down the track . Big Daddy did it with a stick to boot , Don is the man. Old car or new this requires a lot of time , money and effort on the teams part

[Jeff Teuton]

Just for conversation, just how far back should the rules be pushed? 1960, 65,70, camshafts (we all know that story), anybody got any Atlas Bucrons left, Chev trans with chev insides, stock wheels, the carb that came with no mods, mufflers & complete exhaust, no weight moved ( famous gas tanks etc), just how far back? What state would you (Bruce) be willing to run that beautiful corvette? I mean if we gonna regulate, then let's regulate all the stuff. And while we are at it, lets disallow all the specialty parts allowed by the regulators, (later carbs, heads, etc). It don't matter if they ain't any, and lets face it how can there not be plenty chevy stuff left. They made milliions unlike Ford and Mopar who at the time were just kept in business by GM to keep the regulators off of GM. Drive the car to the race? Why not. Litereally off the showroom from 62 up? Might be fun.

[novassdude]

I think if they were doing this with showroom available cars there would be a whole lot less complaining going on. Look under the hood of a normal show room Challenger and a PD challenger you would be lucky to even see that the motors were even related.

[Bruce Noland]

Anthony,
It does seem like it took awhile for you to get your program together, but others have not had as much difficulty. Don't forget we are in the same division. Also, it is not the job of the ahfs to correct intentional misrepresentations by the oem's and nhra staff.

Jeff,
It's not the parts and changes that have been allowed over 50 years that is ruining the Stock and Super Stock categories, and you know it. It's the hugely bogus factors that will continue to be a problem. You should stop pretending that this is business as usual. This is a wholesale give away to the oem's. And that includes the new Camaros. You guys all belong in separate classes. Don't think we are going to lay down on this problem. I have heard from one person who is working on a social media campaign (twitter) to make the nhra fans aware of what is going on between nhra and the oem's. I wish him well.

[D.Johns]

08 cobra jet 491hp

08 Shelby 500hp

All the fuss for a number 3 qualifier that was only 1.046 under index. Only 2 cars even registered for AA/stock.