[Paul Plummer]

NO. There are plenty of LEGAL S/SS cars out there. Get THEM to come to the race.[/QUOTE]

I mean no disrespect to you, IHRA, NHRA or any other racer, but, here is my opinion on the uphill battle with teaching old dogs new tricks and why we need to attract fresh blood to IHRA stock eliminator.

When I go to NHRA division and national event races out west, the same racers and racers families have been going to these events since the day the class was started. Not only are many of these folks long in the tooth, they are also dyed in the wool NHRA competitors. The other issue is the family reunion nature of such long standing traditions. Most of these racers and their families have known each other for 40 or 50 years.

When you tell them to stop patronizing NHRA, no matter how dysfunctional that organization may or may not be, you will not overcome the family reunion nature of NHRA drag racing out west. Every event out here is like family gathering.

The other issue we have out here vs. where you are located in the southeast is that in division 6 my closest 5 IHRA tracks are 5 hours, 7 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours and 11 hours away. I recall in your article - 13 tracks within a 100 miles. Trust me I am envious and tried to convince my wife to move to your town - she said I could but would have to sell the car to cover the alimony and child support!! Basically, on my budget I can afford to attend two IHRA national events and one NHRA division race a year , which is in my home town.

On Salt Lake's Nitrojam week-end I will be making the choice to travel 11 hours to an IHRA class race vs. 45 minutes to our only local NHRA division race as they are both on the same week-end. Normally, this would fly in the face of reason, however, it is worth it to me to promote IHRA and help build something new for those who are outsiders to the NHRA click.

Demographically, this sport is in trouble and too expensive for most people to afford. Due to high cost of traveling out west, I am hoping you can see where I am coming from on ways to attract " new local blood" to the sport.

Remember back in the day, you bought these cars at the dealership on Monday and Drag Raced them on Saturday and Sunday - no aluminum transmissions, acid ported heads, $50K-$100K purpose built stockers, etc. This is where it all started and I think we need to find a way to bring fresh blood in through the same door, today, if this form of racing is to thrive.

At the end of the day I am hoping that we get enough interest out here to get division 6 off the ground and build an alternative and fun class racing series through IHRA! It would be great if we could do it keeping everything the same as it has been for 40 years without changing rules or making concessions and just convince the NHRA guys to come over to IHRA. This, I fear is a dead-end road.

Hopefully the discussion on this topic will prompt a few more people to commit and we can actually race stock at Salt Lake in June.