[Alan Roehrich]

Ken,
I'm well aware of how much it costs to run Stock, in fact, I'm painfully aware. I probably will not be able to field a car on my own, at least not in the foreseeable future. I drove a car last year that belonged to a friend I do a lot of work for. That car is gone, and I won't have a ride for a while, maybe a long while, who knows. But believe me, I know exactly what it costs to build an upper class car that runs a decent number. I know exactly what it costs to buy a motorhome and a trailer, or a dooley and a living quarters trailer.

I'm actually glad that there are guys like the ones you meet and you deal with, those guys really are car lovers and gear heads. Those guys I like, regardless of brand. It does not matter who they work for. Those guys are not corporate America.

It is their bosses that are corporate America that will do the harm. The guys in the board rooms and the stock holders' meetings are the ones who have the final say, and they have only one thing in mind, money. Their only interest is how much money they can make, and they don't care how they make it.

The corporate view from a manufacturer on sportsman racing is no different than the corporate view from NHRA on sportsman racing. How good a job has NHRA been doing at taking care of Stock?

Don't get me wrong, it would be nice if all that it took to help Stock was some corporate interest and some corporate cash. But what Stock needs is more participation and even more important, more spectator interest. A few "new" cars and a couple of big splashes in the media won't do it. The only people that will attract will be yawning 15 minutes later, and 30 minutes later they'll be looking for something else new.

There's not going to be any "magic pill" in the form of a "rebirth of the factory HP wars of the sixties" to save Stock. And when the new wears off of it, that money will be gone, and so will the people it drew. But worse yet, the people that were already here, and got turned off or run off, will be gone, and they won't come back.

Look at how many people have left when something came along and rendered their stuff obsolete, and never came back. Even the people with plenty of money, who have $200K in a racing operation, are going to have $75K of it become obsolete. That $75K becomes $30K overnight. And then they'll need to spend another $75K to be competitive again. You can bet more of them will leave than will pony up. Then what?

And there aren't too many from the next generations who have $200K to jump in, and even if they do, most of them are not inclined to do so.

The only people who can help Stock and Super Stock now are the racers and their real friends. The "big three" aren't going to save us, regardless of how nice and wonderful that would be.