[Michael Beard]

Instead of reducing HP on over a thousand old cars, why wouldn't you increase HP on the much smaller number of factory cars, which need a HP increase in the first place? They've already appended numerous class weight breaks above A/SA. As you point out, it's not about "slowing them down", but rather classifying them properly.

Dodge blew the roof off the automotive industry by proclaiming the Hellcat made 707HP. It wouldn't have been very marketable to say "This supercharged 6.2L makes 426HP!" If anything, you'd figure they'd want to redo the weight break/classification structure so that ALL cars, both old and new had HP factors that made some semblance of sense to people in the outside world. Do you want to advertise to the public that your factory race car makes 500HP, or 900HP?

As usual, full disclosure: I run a DragPak combo. I think the new cars are great, and are impressive race cars. I simply feel that NHRA could've included them in a way that was realistic and fair, while actually improving their marketing position.

$.02,