Back from Indy-what's happened to Stock Eliminator??

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Lew Silverman

No one is saying that there shouldn't be change. Change is inevitable.

What some of us are saying is "make the changes FAIR!" If we've let a group of vehicles compete with an unfair advantage, as some of us believe, then the situation needs to be corrected. Lowering the index's doesn't do it, it only moves the mis-factored car's higher on the list. Fix the problem created with the unrealistic horsepower factors first!

Lew

Actually, I am saying there shouldn't be change. The class itself should not be fundamentally changed. Stock Eliminator was never intended to have purpose built race cars as part of the class. It's really simple. You can't mix production street driven combinations with purpose built race cars. There was a time when NHRA knew this. Purpose built factory race cars were put in Super Stock or Factory Experimental classes, where they belonged.

Face the facts here. You cannot properly factor purpose built race cars to make them work in Stock Eliminator.

First off, the last thing we need is 6.0 pound per HP cars on 9" tires running 8 second elapsed times in Stock Eliminator. Even at 7.0 pounds per HP, if they were to do that, you'll soon have 3700 pound cars on 9" slicks running 8.90 ET's. Why? Because the index for the 7.0 class is going to get set really low, because they want to go really fast, and NHRA apparently has no qualms at all about giving them what they want.

Further, what they'll really want, and they've already asked for, is 6.0-6.5 pound classes. That's Super Stock A and B territory. Think about that for a minute. It took a full ten years, and a new class a half pound per HP lighter, for Stock Eliminator to go from Bobby DeArmond's legendary 9.99 in A/SA to a few cars in AA/SA running in the 9.50 zone. And two tenths of that five tenth ET drop came from taking 200 pounds out of the cars. Now we have A/SA cars running 9.50, and they're sandbagging.

Second, so long as the factory can "make" any car or engine they want with a pen and a piece of paper, you can't keep them factored. The AHFS barely works as it is, often only working at Indy for class. Read the rule: OEM may apply for inclusion of ANY SPECIAL PRODUCTION RUNS into the Official NHRA Stock Car Classification Guide. Special runs must include a minimum of 50 units of an already accepted body style, need not be showroom available. Applications evaluated on an individual basis. Acceptance will not imply precedence. Every year, they can simply make minor changes, and get a new factor.

Factory race cars need their own class, just like they had for years. Stock Eliminator is not that class. Sure, new cars should be in Stock Eliminator. New production showroom available cars. Stock Eliminator needs to return to the original concept.