[Mike Pearson]

Originally Posted by Nathan Stinson

Seems like a lot of bitterness in the post here. How exactly did these racers being invited to a race for an exhibition affect the outcome of your race weekend? We all already know that most stock/SS guys don't care for any other class but what they run in, and that's cool, but why not educate yourselves instead of b*tching about something that you don't even want to understand?
I can't answer about the cars that you are speaking about, but I know earlier this year at the New England national event, NHRA ran a 8 car X275 race. I happen to run in the X275 class and I can tell you those guys are not rookie racers, in fact the guy that won the exhibition, Dean Marinis, has a Pro Mod car he has ran at NHRA national events. We have records and we have a national points fund, just not thru NHRA. In fact guys like me do business with people who are "class racers". I just picked up my cylinder heads for my X275 car from a pretty well known SS racer, Jimmy Bridges.
Do these cars belong at NHRA national events? Only NHRA knows what the future holds on that, but one thing I can tell you is people like myself and others with these cars, we are as much of a member of NHRA as you guys are. We pay membership, license, and chassis certification dues just like you guys, so whether you like it or not we are in the club too!
I think when Steve Jackson started running a Pro Mod this year, NHRA saw first hand what a following that the small tire radial world has, and like someone else mentioned I am sure they want to try and test the waters to cash in, and I don't blame anyone running a business for doing that! When guys like Donald Long can put on a race at SGMP and have to turn people away because the place is at capacity, and pay 60K winners purse, I am sure that gets NHRA's attention.

It all boils down to this. If you add another class one of the existing classes has to be reduced in the number of participants that are allowed into the event. NHRA has been consistently reducing the quota for the sportsman racers such as stock and Super Stock. This is the main reason that the S/SS guys have a bad taste in their mouth about the bracket cars and classes that historically have not been a part of the national event program. S/SS class competitors have to attend the divisional races to get enough grade points to be able to enter the nationals. This is expensive to do because of the travel and days away from work. NHRA added TD and TS to the program and that is one of the reasons that the S/SS quotas have been reduced to the numbers they are now. If the X275 guys already have a sanctioning body that runs their events why do they want to invade the races that we race at. We don't ask to run at your events. There are no NHRA records or an actual class in the rule book for X275.