[Paul Plummer]

I am not seeing a lot of posts regarding interest in contesting stock eliminator at the Salt Lake IHRA Nitrojam event - I think the last count was about 7 people. Are there any Salt Lake locals besides superstock racer Tom Albritton that come to this forum? We need to hear from you or your buddies on this issue.

Put quite simply, if the local racers in a city of $1M+ people can't find at least 12 of the 24 cars locally to compete, there should be no complaining by anyone on why IHRA is not automatically willing to cough up $2K-$3K in prize money plus contingency for three cars to show up only one of which was local (he actually won the event).

I keep hearing the cry baby stories about NHRA has this event scheduled and that event scheduled at the same time - boo hoo! IHRA has many different stock classes in which you can compete. Let me list these for you -- STOCK - just like NHRA except you get 10.5" and roller rockers, STOCK FUEL INJECTION, STOCK TRUCKS, STOCK GT, PURE STOCK and CRATE MOTOR STOCK.

So here is some outside the box thinking - go to a local car show, talk to a few wheel polisher types and ask them to take there cars to the track to enter the PURE STOCK class. We then approach IHRA about letting these guys run, even if they don't quite fit the rules to the letter. There has to be at 5 or 10 people with restored vintage iron in Salt Lake. We do the same for some of the other classes - I keep stressing the crate motor class because a lot of no box cars are pretty close.

The 24 who show up that are 100% legal to run the class, get to make the decision on whether to allow the almost legal guys to run. I would venture a guess that there won't be many heads-up matches anyway at which point were talking about foot brake bracket racing.

Why is this different than the no-box class?

Once these guys get a chance to see what stock eliminator is all about and learn from some of the seasoned vets, you will start getting converts. One of the coolest things about stock is the ability to innovate - it is like a drug. Next to the money, most people shy away from class racing because it is very complicated to understand for new people who would like to try the sport.

Let's do something new and different, get off the couch and help us get this class to salt lake in 2011.

I will volunteer to talk to IHRA about a fresh idea.