Greetings to all seven of you who follow my blog and I
appreciate your continued support.
I know it has been sometime since my last post and I
apologize for that. Between master’s program, (do not roll your eyes at me) and
other things it was necessary to put the blog on the back burner for a while.
Well now that the reason for not updating is out of the way.
The subject of this week’s blog is somewhat of a rehash of an earlier topic.
At the world finals in Pomona, the rumor mill was running
overtime with the topic of the NHRA going back to quarter mile racing for the
nitro classes, top fuel and funny car.
Now if this is true it is a great piece of news for us purist
in the sport. Many drag racing fans are
linear thinkers and they see the set distance for drag racing as a quarter of a
mile nothing else.
Here is a question, would the return to quarter mile drag
racing correct the trend of slumping TV ratings and declining spectator attendance?
Speaking of TV ratings Michael Knight in a recent report
stated that NHRA’S television audience had declined for the third straight
year. Since 2011 to 2013, viewer ship is
down nearly 11.7 percent. It fell 5.9 percent last year.
Now if the NHRA would go back to quarter mile racing will
that improve the rating? Most likely, it would not do much to move the needle.
So why are the numbers down? Mr. Knight did not elaborate, but I am going
out on a limb here and say the reason for the decline is when the broadcast are
shown, or not shown on ESPN which has a contract with the NHRA to broadcast
their events.
It seems the NHRA
broadcast is the redheaded stepchild of the “Mother ship”. It makes it hard to build viewership when
qualifying shows frequently air at horrible times such as 3:00 am Eastern time.
Or when then NHRA shows are delayed by broadcasts of “The
Iowa High School Girls Junior Varsity Badminton Championships” or some such
thing.
Now I know, I am being facetious, but you get the point.
Even though the NHRA pays ESPN to air their shows, NHRA
seems to be kicked around when it comes to showing the events. Maybe a change
of tact is in order.
Would it be better to be a big fish in a smaller pond of sports
network such as CBS Sports or NBC Sports, or even drag racing supporter Forrest
Lucas’ network, MAVTV, rather than being
an afterthought on the Mother ship.
Nevertheless, I digress. Will going back to quarter-mile racing help
those ratings? I do not think so. There must be a solid consistent television
package to increase the ratings. In addition, the television rating might just
go up if the broadcast would shy away from the John Force Show.
On the other hand, would quarter mile top fuel and funny car
racing help attendance at the events? Possibly, it would. Drag race fans,
purist equate the sport to quarter mile racing. Drag racing is the quickest
sport on the planet, and running a shorter distance makes it almost too quick
to derive any enjoyment from.
There is a dilemma with going back to quarter mile racing
for the nitro cars.
One, technological advancements have allowed the top fuel cars
to exceed 332 miles per hour in a thousand feet and 320 miles per hour for the
funny cars. Now if the cars were simply
to return to quarter mile racing you might see top fuel speeds nearly 350 miles
per hour and 340 miles per hour in funny car.
From a marketing and promotions aspects this would be
fantastic. The NHRA marketing and promotions department if they were aggressive
would have a field day with these statistics. Pumping up the fan base to take
in the greater excitement of 350 mile per hour race cars.
Conversely, the NHRA like many corporations also have a risk
management division. I could see those
people in risk management wanting to have no part of racecars going 350 miles
per hour on their tracks.
The NHRA this year dodged a bullet when it comes to having fans
seriously injured at when the body from Robert Hight’s funny car blew off at
Charlotte and landed on fans in the grand stands.
If there was a 350 mile per hour dragster were not able to
stop at Pomona and end up on Fairplex Drive at five o’clock on a Friday
night. Well you could just about write
off the sport of NHRA Drag Racing.
Which leads me to part two and there are tracks that have
the limited space for the shutdown areas. Pomona and Englishtown are two that
come to mind. These facilities are land locked and have no physical ability to
be extended to allow a car with a parachute or brake anomaly to stop safely 350
miles per hour without crashing onto a public highway.
Therefore, if the NHRA is looking to go back to quarter mile
racing, the sanctioning body must address the speed of the cars and slow them
down. As I have stated in earlier blogs, there are two simple ways to slow
these cars down.
In talking with various crew chiefs in the sport and consensus
is that the NHRA can either take away one of the magnetos from the engine. Thus, there is no way to burn all the fuel injected
by the 100 gallon per minute pump into the combustion chamber. Therefore, fuel flow rates would be reduced until
the magnetos could produce a spark with enough energy to burn the fuel. Moreover,
in theory slowing down the cars to a more manageable speed..
The other school of thought is regulating the pump rate to
60 gallons per minute rate rather than 100 gallon per minute, and keeps the two
magnetos. The theory is the two magnetos would eliminate dropped cylinders and
fire the fuel in the combustion chamber which can a does cause engine damage.
Either way horsepower reduction in a manageable order must
be done to slow the cars down.
The long and the short of if it is, if the NHRA does go back
to quarter mile racing for the nitro classes, some due diligence must be done before this can
be accomplished.
The NHRA must address these rumors and look at the
risk/reward factors of going back to quarter mile racing for top fuel and funny
car, and inform the competitors in a timely manner on their decision.
For this fan, I hope the answer is yes, to quarter mile top
fuel and funny car racing.
Just to see if anybody notices…
