Pinks All Out

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Woodro Josey

From what I am being told, they only pick 16 or 32 of the closest runs that are together, and the rest of the 4-5 hundred get to go home?

Exactly.

I keep hearing how the winner is not predetermined after that choice is made, provided the guy doesn't make a major screw up. But no one can explain how you can have a spread of 2-3 tenths between 16 cars and not know which guy should win it. They can't explain how, at the end of the show, if their chosen one does not win, the crew is walking around wondering how their guy lost, right there on TV, either.

I'll grant you, it makes decent TV, if that sort of thing amuses you. But it doesn't make good racing, if that's what you're looking for.

[Evan Smith]

Alan, I was at the E-town show/race and there was no script at all, and had access to the "war room." The cards fell where did naturally. This was a couple of years back and there are now a few different TV personalities so things may have changed.

With 300-500 cars why would think they couldn't find cars within a few tenths or hundredths?

What I could tell is that it was mostly folks looking for 15 minutes of fame, mixed with some real racers. Overall it was cool for me because four of my friends were picked and 1 made the final.

Evan

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Evan Smith

With 300-500 cars why would think they couldn't find cars within a few tenths or hundredths?
Evan

If you have 16 cars, separated by a couple of tenths, there is going to be one or two that are faster than the rest. They claim they look for those that run consistently all out. So, they've picked a field, and it includes 1 or more cars that are consistently faster than the rest. They know who should win before their "final eliminations" even start. If they pick a field from 11.00 to 11.30, the guys running 11.10 to 11.30 aren't getting anywhere. Maybe a guy running 11.10 can catch the guy running 11.00 taking a nap at the "arm drop". If he doesn't, the 11.30 guys sure won't.

The point being, if you pick 16 cars, "running all out consistently", separated by 3 tenths from fastest to slowest, and you don't know who is most likely to win, you're an idiot. And if you pick a guy 3 tenths faster than most of the rest of the 16, or even half or more of the rest of the 16, you've picked a winner, all he has to do is not screw up real bad, and not break. I don't see how it could be more obvious.

And everyone else has wasted a day beating on their car for nothing, they never had a chance at anything other than a few passes, because they were never really being considered for a shot at the prize.

And hey, if that is your thing, and you enjoy it, there's nothing wrong with it. No one is forced to participate. Go for it. I'm truly happy for people that like it, at least they're having fun, with cars.

The thing is, Kevin and I could take "big orange" to one, and likely make the "highlight" segment by doing good burnouts and loosening the shocks to do 300' wheel stands. But we ain't gonna get picked to run for the money when they're looking for 11 second cars. So we'd beat on a $50K car all day after spending $300-$400 to get there, to get a quick 10 second TV appearance.

[cad]

I am not going to Topeka to race in the one coming up in the next couple of weeks. Seems like a waste of time and money to me personally.
I do enjoy watching it.
Last weekend, On Route 66 (Joliet IL) Raceway's FB page, they stated that they had the fastest PINKS field of all sub-8 second cars ever.

[chris3racing]

I understand they had a good crowd at Route 66 this week-end an ran 8 second field. It did appear that NHRA had a good spectator crowd down the road at Norwalk also.

Let me try this. If you pick 16 cars and quickest is 6.592 seconds and number 16 is 6.679 seconds that is .087 seconds top to bottom not tenths of a second. Everybody slower that that 6.679 has to go home no matter how much you spent to get there. Which one of these cars is the car selected to win?

Two cars pre-stage and stage, both bulbs on, either both sides of the tree flashes yellow/ green (sometimes red) or a flaggman is standing in the middle of the track and drops his arms. (Pinks does use the staging lights and when the starter sees both pairs of bulbs on on a box at the base of his feet he arm drop starts the race) One car has a reaction time of .058 seconds and runs and et of 6.685 while the other car has a reaction time of .073 seconds and runs an et of 6.77. Win goes to car number one on a "holeshot". The margin of victory was .007 and guess what car number one was probably not the car everyone planned would win. And one driver got a "check", not cash, for $25,000 that no one else, at the race, could have gotten on Sunday.

[Peter Ash]

It's boring! I would rather spend the time working on my car!