Thinking about this in depth.......
 

Yep, gave it some thought, and in my opinion, if it wasn't for bracket racing, you would not be here. This thread would not be here. And this website would not be here. I started racing at the tender age of 16, in 1965, No bracket racing then. Had a 55 chev wagon, ran I/SA, and got whipped by class cars by 3-4 seconds every time. Very discouraging for a young racer. So buddies and I following our hearts and desires, put an olds engine in it, towed three hours to the nearest drag strip, and found that we were now in B/MP, "clever move on our part", but what did we know, we were just hot rodders and wanted to race. Needless to say, we got whupped even worse. We did not have any money, and we could not compete. I am sure that we were among many other young guys in those days. So like so many, we did not bother with the drag strip, we went street racing. we could compete, have fun, and enjoy our cars. Then along came "bracket racing" it was a natural gravitation off the streets and back to the track, we could now compete, have fun, and put an olds engine in a chev if we wanted to!! Race tracks are a business, they have to make money. There would not have been enough class racers around to support any race track. Its so simple to say that you just have to work on your iron, and make it competitive, but not everyone is rich, and can afford to buy the fast stuff, so to the richest went the spoils, and quite frankly even as a young man I could see that happening. Bracket racing was the great equalizer, all of a sudden anyone could win a race, and be competitive. the young guys could take their muscle cars to the track and win, it was a feel good situation for everyone. without the evolution of bracket racing, the sport of drag racing would have died in the early 70's, or at the very least would have been a minor league auto sport for the wealthy, with few tracks far between each other. So, just maybe, instead of ruining S/SS class racing, it actually was the salvation of class racing. You now have lots of tracks, supported by lots of competitors, and their friends and family's. You have mail order catalogs, speed and hot rod companies, specialty manufacturers, engine builders, trans and convertor specialists, a vast network of business, and motels, restaurants, fuel vendors etc. All supported by a large drag racing community, AND, I seriously doubt that 1500-1600 class racers are the economic engine behind that industry!!! you are just a small cog in that big wheel, In my opinion, the biggest cogs in that wheel are "bracket racers".........Yep, I am a "bracket racer" proud to be one to. just wish I was better at it!!

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that is also why circle track racing died. wait it is still going. everyweek-end, thousands of fans. they must be dialing in, wait, they run all out. how can that be? dont they know if they go to fast and lose it has more crowd appeal? wait, local bracket fans have 3 people in the bleachers, wait, it saves on bleacher money. i see now. where did you race on the street where you dialed in? just curious.

Thinking about this in depth.......
 

Most roundy rounders have engine rules, spec engines and such!
The big thing that separates them from bracket racers is they all take the green together.
In the past a few places have tried claimer motor races, like they do in horse racing, but as far as I know nobody was able to carry the program long enough for very many people to get involved.

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Bob Glidden once said on camera in an interview, if it wasn't for bracket racing...Drag Racing would not be where it grew into and I agree 100%.

The early 70's saw participation at such a low level many tracks would have shut down if bracket racing in some form had not gotten going.

My local track had very few cars there untill a bracket program was tried. It started to catch on and grew quickly.......Class cars were not keeping things going on the local level and were not that plentiful at NHRA races.

Rules favored too few cars and NHRA needed time to get a better program formed that kept people coming back and get more participation.

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if this is so true why doesnt circle track racing dial in? why doesnt circle track racing fall away because of the cost? why doesnt eddeyville have anyone watching today when in the 70s the place had 1500 people there on a regular basis?

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I also started racing in 1964/65 (with a vacation in the 90's)and raced in F/SA and as others I was very slow and could not win. When Bracket racing started I did not compete as a bracket person as I felt it was in not way racing. I have continued to race most of these years on a very low budgit being very slow for most of them, in 2003 and still on a very limited budgit I finally started doing better and became a "fast car" and now the bracket racers are not happy and want to continue to add hp to my combination.

Bracket racing may of added cars at the races, but also has taken away most of the fans, and has over crowded most races doing away with the number of runs everyone gets and baring eliminators of real racers from National events.

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Bracket racing may have helped the race tracks but it has totally screwed up class racing and driven away fans. IMO

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Dirt track racing has faded around here and there are fewer and fewer tracks and cars. It was once a pretty thriving sport.....

Stock and SS racing IS bracket racing.......you can try to convince yourself it isn't but they give the Trophy and the $$$ to the guy who wins by cutting a good RT and running on his DIAL-IN.....Yes occasionally it is a heads up run for the $$$ but not very often......If you made racing flatout and the fastest guy wins....pretty soon you'd be right back to fewer and fewer cars showing up knowing they don't have a chnace unless they spend a fortune to run with the big dogs.....

It's simple economics...if a track can't stay in business there is no place to race. Spectators? You have to be joking if you think todays people will come to watch anything other than Nitro cars......Look at Nascar.....Empty stands except for the Cup cars.....

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Say whatever you want but Bracket Racing is the only refuge for the little guy!

Crowds? Hold an all Stock and see the crowds....all friends and crew members....and that's all....!

And now for all the Stock Racers (of which I am one)....if you have shoe polish on your windshield......you're a bracket racer, only you have more restrictive rules....

JimR

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Obviously 2 different perspectives, driver participation and fan participation.

Fans like heads up. Some driver like bracket , and some car owners as well, as they can be competitive with a good package and driver I would Imagine......

Bikes are easy theyre all based on simple displacment and its "heads" up do anything within the rules for your displacment first one to the finish wins like in circle jerk.

SCCA used to have a few classes like what was it Formula V and now I think Formula 2000 ? Leveled the playing field from a $ side to a point as the engine/specs were the same.

I would think TF and TA are like this as well....same basic setups with some wiggle room, and all team, R&D and driver....but heads up.

Kinda impossible to do with the other classes now I would imagine, maybe more "heads up" classes all based on a similar chassis / motor......kinda a Jr. Funny car a base chassis spec with a change out body, if you will.....the fans will get it.....might bring back some of the "Wild Days" of drag racing as well......be nice and standard, kinda a hybrid of TF and Circle Jerk engine rules.....but finding people who all agree on a common motor spec is gonna be hard....then again maybe there is/was something like this I dont see (recently)

For big driver and car participation I agree Bracket racing saved things....

For fans on TV....they dont get it unless theyre die hard Drag fans...but everyone like to SEE heads up.

My opinion...Im waiting on lunch :)

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Jeremy:I do not think any bracket racer gave your combo any horsepower, NHRA did.

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First there was the car....so what's the point here?

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hellooooo, stock racing today is still a bracket race. that is why no one comes. i dont bring people to the track and we race ss because i am embarrased to explain how someone went too fast, crossed the finish line first and lost. no one understands. i dont dislike bracket racers, just dont try and convince anyone its exciting.

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Savoyracer, You make very good points and I believe them to be true! Randy, makes good points as well. Racing all out with class rules is real racing. The first guy with a green light that gets to the stripe wins. Thats the way it is in almost all sports (track and field, the Olympics, etc). If I'm sitting in the bleachers, (which I do) I want to see a heads-up run all out! If I am a participant, (which I am) I need the bracket format, or I can't play. Well, I could play but it would require the help of others or (team effort), (engine program) and alot more money!
I take pride in building my own cars, and then driving my own cars. I like my racing the old fashion way (Individual effort). Don't get me wrong, I played all the ball sports and am a Retired Career/Professional Firefighter, now I do get the team concept. I just could'nt boast about my car being fast, if I did'nt build the car or the engine (my opinion only racers....please don't get nervous)! I build my cars (and I mean build it, not buy it from a chassis shop...see my photo album) and I can tell you that recieving a "best engineered award" is a big deal for me. I did buy a used (cheap as super/stock engines go) engine for my new car just to get me going in the Super/Stock arena. Anyway, to race in Randy's world is not possible for me. But to race in Savoy's world can and will happen! I can race Savoy style (brackets) against Randy style (fastest) in Super/Stock Eliminator, and they better have a good bracket game! Some would say that bracket racing killed class drag racing. I would say without bracket racing, you would'nt have a legal place to race. Bracket racers could move up to Stock or Super/Stock with some equitment upgrades. There is something else preventing them from moving up.....COST! The average guy can't do it. But he can take his street car down to the local track, pay his money and help to keep that track alive. Thus allowing the possiblility of a new racer to come in and maybe get the Stock, Super/Stock bug.
It would be really cool (just dreaming) to be fast, and to have done it all by myself! LOL
The bottom line is that we are all competitive. Lay down the rules, and I'm going to try my best to beat your azz....! Looking foward to being friends as well as a good competitor with you all! Wade Mahaffey

Re: Thinking about this in depth.......
 

A reason why the stands are empty, no track promotion, owners evidently satisfied with the racer's gate. Another is the demographic, the '50's thru the early '70's muscle car era has morphed into econo boxes, stereos, graphics, drifting.

The "Sunday-Sunday-Sunday" radio ads are no more. When we raced the last D4 divisional in Noble, Ok, the local paper had "things-to-do-this weekend" from Pumpkin parades to art festivals in and around Norman and Noble, but nary a mention of "the drags"....wouldn't take much to call the paper

Evidently Pat @ No Problem has it figured out with fans standing along the fence 3 & 4 deep at times

One bracket-to-class difference, in my opinion, is generally class cars are a Car Show in Motion, while brackets contain a fair amount of "cosmetically challenged" and "performance suspect poppers".....hey, and that's OK for the brackets and not dissin' them for racing what you have....but it is a difference

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i am not even that competetive, we run ss/cs and michael manns can kick our ***! you know why? he is faster than us, but i dont hold that against him. i would rather be beat by a fast car than a slow one.

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I think that part of the problem with filling the stands like in the old days, is that these are not the old days anymore. In the old days when we were kids, we physically did things like playing cops and robbers, army, baseball, football etc. We were running wide open, being in the house was like being in jail, and our parents were saying "will you sit down". And we were riding our bikes....RACING our bikes! Today, I live in a large neighborhood in Southern Maryland and there are no bikes "0" running the streets. In todays world the young (and old people) do all of this on the TV screen. How can you expect a new generation to put his/her hand on a tool, when they have only held a joy stick before? Kids don't even know of this thing called drag racing. They never see the cars because they're in a closed up box. In the old days it was really cool to see a race car on a open trailer. It made you want to see it run, thus the seed was planted and there is your fan base growing. We as racers need to promote the sport that we love. Put that car in the public eye every now and then. Get involved in the community with that car. Do your part to push the sport, or be a part of letting it die! Wade Mahaffey
http://i50.tinypic.com/11w97ht.jpg
THIS IS WHERE IT STARTS TO BUILD A STRONG FAN BASE
http://i50.tinypic.com/1j4tac.jpg
THIS IS GETTING INVOLVED IN THE COMMUNITY TO BUILD MORE FAN BASE

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good point wade! new way to look at it. that is how i got hooked. seeing cars on open trailers. that is very true.

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If the breakout wasn't in force stock and superstock would be gone.
I liked the go fast racing that NHRA instituted back in the mid 70's. So did John Hershlow, and Bernie Agaman. (they ran Etown on a regular basis). But back then the deep pocket only got you so far. Junkyard parts were available at reasonable prices. We worked hard on the car and were upper second string. As far as winning went. We went a few rounds and occasionally won.
That was before all the "HIGH DOLLAR" enhancements. Almost everyone had an open trailer etc. Given the same go fast racing today. You would have 10 or 12 cars show up at a national event. Only the megabuck guys could compete.
For all of you that hate the shoe polish. Please leave and go Comp racing, or if you don't like the 1000' stuff. Build a prostocker I'm sure your knowlege and expertice will put you right up there with WJ.
But for Gods sake leave us lowly shoe polish racers alone.
Don't fix what ain't broke.

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Seems to be a popular debate around here.We have a Malibu wagon my kid won Div 4 N/E in. He,along with his brother and myself would like nothing better than to run it in stk.
But I dont think the vortec head little 355 and glide combo will be legal.
So it go,s back to MONEY. I have been told the 305 combo is pretty friendly.
So about 5-7K for a decent legal motor not a killer. You know what kind of SBC bracket motor we can buy for this?? Actually a pretty nice one.
Then theres the correct carb thing.Then theres the metric trans thing about 2500.00? I really dont know.Then theres the expense of actually racing the car at the div and natl level.So lets just say we did pull it off O.K. we got ONE motor and ONE trans and converter.You think we would risk running the car in 2 classes at the brackets on other weekends. Just cant do it right now--- maybe someday

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I think our Class/Bracket car races will be improved in 2010 with the new .15 faster rule. There just needs to be some ballance between the 2 different types of racing.

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Well said.

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i am going comp racing, that is my point. it should not cost what it does to actually race.it is broken as far as crowd appeal goes. i am not trying to stir anyone up, im just saying there must be a way to make it affordable and interesting.any bracket racing involving any class including s/ss is boring. just dont piss down my neck and tell me its raining. and by the way, we have little chance to be winners in our choice, but it is actually racing, only reason we are trying it.

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You guys also have to think of the cars that the OEM's were producing in the late 50's 60's and early 70's. Faster cars were introduced every year and a lot of advertising was geared to the young guys. You could take a showroom stock BB Chevelle and go pretty fast at the track, take the slicks off and you had a daily driver. The key is if you had a decent job you could afford one of these cars and go racing. Not many of these cars are being produced today and if you have one you need to be making pretty good $$$ to afford it.

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i think most are missing my point. it is to expensive to run heads-up. but at knoxville they have 360 sprints with a spec head and the place is packed. head policing is done by a rep. of brodix, something like this could work for drag racing, and people would have an affordable option.

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Back in the mid '70's,I raced fun&grudge and ET brackets at Irwindale.It closed,we went to Orange County.It closed, and we raced at Riverside.All brackets. During that time, I got involved with Chuck Norton,Tony Janes,et all, and drove a stocker at Winternationals in '83.That was a different world, and nearly the only game in town,so I modified my operation from brackets to Stock Eliminator.Riverside left off in '88,leaving us in a bad way with only two national events at Pomona for race fodder.All grade-point earning points races were out of the area. That meant towing to Bakersfield or Phoenix a few times.As far as I was concerned, Stock was it. Years later, Fontana came along, then a regular program, then the new Irwindale 1/8th mile track, and the Summit series. We're back to both worlds again, and it's fun again with a few choices along the way. All these tracks seem to draw a crowd of some kind, and yes, shoe polish is a common denominator. Whatever turns you on,I'm grateful for all of it.

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I started racing in the '70's too. The stands used to be packed. However, they were packed because there were always some kind of feature show there. Before there were a bazillion national and divisionals to go to the Pro's used to match race to make money. It was not unusual to go to US 30 on Wednesday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday and see Don Garlits, 16 funny cars, or watch Bob Glidden match race Da Grump. Think all those people in the stands gave a crap about us bracket cars?

Fast forward to today. No match racing, no feature shows, empty stands.

I don't know about anywhere else, but in my area dirt track racing is dying. Boswell and Kankakee ran for years and years. Both shut down mid-season this year from money issues and are both hanging by a thread for next season.

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This is true. And divisional points meets used to have the pros run for points too.

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I am a bracket racer and truthfully I admire what you guys do with a "stock" car but there is now way in hell that I at 25 years old would or probably will ever be able to afford to build a stock legal car and be able to compete in any sort of way unless my oponent had a problem or I get some major support. $$$ is the factor that seperates a "Bracket Racer" to a "Stock" class racer. In bracket racing you still run into near heads up racing and sometimes heads up if your race director is on the ball in the staging lanes. For me to be able to get to a competitive level in stock would take alot more for me to be involved in, I cant afford to go out of town every couple of weeks too head off to another track when I could load my bracket car on the trailer and drive 20 mins down the road and compete every other weekend for half the cash and never have to worry about tear downs or weight so on so forth, unload the car and put the hammer down he who is better at both ends wins.

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Jim is correct in his thinking(I feel) and a lot of the other responses have very good merit.

My thoughts on how to get into class racing for the most reasonable outlay is this;

I already had my Cyclone. Every addition to it has the intention that I will race in stock. Every purchase must be a legal stock part. The roll bars were put in with the intention of running stock. The motor is from a shop that I think I can trust and is NOT stock legal, but affordable. My converter is race ready, but the trans may be weak as it is not top dollar. The rear and suspension is all Calvert and should work well. I am currently waiting on ride height to order shocks and they will be race ready.

I fully intend to bracket race this car for quite a while. Money will be saved and data can be gathered. Once the car can perform in the incremental times as a comparable stocker I will spend the money needed for the motor and the trans.

While I am not young(51) this is a formula that can be used by anyone beginning or getting back into racing as I intend to do.

Just my 2 cents

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A question (and I have no idea the answer, it's a sincere question):

Someone mentioned 1550 cars in Stock took passes in NHRA events last year. Any idea how many of those cars have been built in the last 5 years? Last 10 years? As compared to how many have been making passes for 20-30 years now?

I guess the point of my question is - is there new blood coming into class racing? How much?

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You just described the last 15 years of my racing. My Dad parked our car in '87 as a Stocker and it sat until about '94 when I started racing it at the age of 17. Every upgrade I've done to the car over the last 15 years I've done with Stock Eliminator in mind. Like CycloneFE said I've got years of data and now have the car 60'ing pretty close to where it needs to be to be competitve in class. Now I'm focusing on building a competitive engine to get the job done. Don't get me wrong I still have alot of work to do but its only work and I'm not scared of work.

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Kris,

Glad to see I am not the only one. One day it will be a pleasure to line up with you and have a great race.

Steve

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...........Darn good question.........maybe Nitro joe Jackson can find that answer..........I know that at the divisional races I attend [spectator] in division 6 it seems that I have watched a lot of the same cars for many years, and of course the same drivers. I imagine with the new "factory" cars out this last year we will see a small flurry of new cars on the track this next year, and I imagine it will be drivers that we are familiar with, not very many new ones, if any. We all seem to talk about how old we are, and how good things were way back then, not many guys saying how young they are. Just another notch on the belt of the Baby Boomer generation!!.........

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circle track races take minutes not second,so even an economically challanged team can dream of winning because he caught a lucky break.Drag racing takes seconds.If it werent for red lights,heads up racing would always be about having the highest dyno numbers and the most cubic dollars.

Fastest street car racing is one example of this.When they try and make little guy classes it become impossible to make them last.This is because if you made a class that required 6000# cars with 100 cubic inch normall asperated engines on pump gas and powerglides somebody would still find a way to run a budget that rivaled the national deficit to make a car that run 8's and bombed the class for a $500 payout.Outlaw racing took off,but that because they just limit the tire and chassis and allow unlimited power.Putting the power to the ground is the game,and aside from the fact that an extra 1000 hp over your competitor might get you a 2 mph advantage at the big end{because you cant even get down half your power until after the 1200 foot mark},it is a fair race for anybody who can cram a 2000hp engine in a 3000# car on 10" wide tires.

Class racing drag cars iis always going to be tough.Nobody wants to run a spec car like the roundy roundy guys do,and you cant exactly pair a big block Camaro against a 283 biscayne,heads up,there will always be some kind of handicap involoved.

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Well Steve that would be an accomplishment for both of us right now. So I look forward to that. Lets make that the class finals at the US National, how's that.:)