[Alan Roehrich]

Don, I have considerable respect for your opinion, and admire your optimism a great deal.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm still on the path to building or buying a stocker, I'm still working on stuff for my best friend and partner, as well as other people. I have no desire to see the sport I love dearly continue to circle the drain. My goal in life, at 53, is to be like my hero, Jimmy Bridges, and be doing this when I'm well into my seventies and beyond.

That being said, I've crunched the numbers myself, and while we do spend a ton of money with NHRA, I also realize that reality and the long term view often have very little bearing on the modern business plan in America, which is most often based on short term short sighted goals and gains, regardless of the long term.

Even with my love of the sport, and my decision to make every effort to continue, I will not fool myself into believing that NHRA wants us, likes us, and cares about us. To be honest, we're a lot like an abused spouse. We want to believe things will get better, but most often it ends badly.

I do this because I love it. I love my friends, who are family to me, the racers like the Hills, the Welfels, the Walther, the Maggarts, the Tuetons, the Helms family, the Mattinglys, and dozens of others, the staff, Travis Miller, Dave Ley, Bill Floyd, and a dozen others. I plan to keep doing it. I may not keep doing it with NHRA. I plan to build a cool car that I love, a traditional stocker, that will be competitive, even without a soft factor, so whether or not NHRA tanks, or gets rid of us, I'll have a keeper that I'll enjoy.

The flip side is that NHRA has had ample opportunities over the years to improve the lot of the racers. They have chosen to do otherwise every single time. Higher entry fees, more fees, more hassles, worse treatment, they're run off the sponsors. The purse has effectively dropped 75% when you look at contingency payout too.

And if you think they're not inviting these other classes as a way of shopping for a replacement for our classes, you need to take off your rose colored glasses.