Rumors about NHRA going to quarter mile racing for T/F and F/C, and what I think must be done to accomplish that.

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…