[sg1838]

Actually Jason, that was my quote. Hey, I'll take the credit if you agree. lol

Agreed. Credit where credit is due.

But I didn't mean we need part of the 100 mil dispersed to the sportsman racers in cash. I just meant to increase purses and spend the money for the benefit of us all.....in various ways.

OK. But, though I want purses to increase to better reflect today's economy, NHRA being bought out and a potential increase in purses really are two mutually exclusive items, like another person pointed out. There's no reason why NHRA has to supplement the payout from the $100 million they just got.

At an average NHRA national event, they conservatively take in $100,000 in car & driver entry fees, not including entry fees for the crew that those cars & drivers bring along (I won't even get into the issue of souvenirs and concessions). CONSERVATIVELY, that's another one person per car, or another $60,000. That's a total of $160,000 in at a single event just to cover the sportsman racers. Not including the alcohol cars (I don't really consider them sportsman racers), NHRA only pays out about $60,000. That leaves $100,000, which is a LOT of money. Granted, some of this has to go towards insurance and other operating expenses. But I doubt it costs NHRA $100,000 just to run Comp, S/S, Stk., S/C, S/G, and S/St.

And I've tried to be as conservative with the numbers as I possibly can. Of course, others on here will just accuse me of bitching just for the sake of bitching, and that if I don't like it I should go race someplace else. And I'm not looking for the payout to be great enough so that I can earn a living racing. But, if I get down to 4 cars (out of about 100), I shouldn't be going home thinking to myself, "Well, it only cost me about $1,000 for the weekend once you take into consideration the maintenance costs of the race car."

And if anybody thinks I'm nuts, ask Dan Fletcher what he thinks about losing in the semis...

You are right about the Sox & Martin's, and Jenkins etc. But remember they all started in S/SS.

Agreed. And my comment wasn't meant as a slam towards Stk. or S/S. I wish I still had the stock floor for my Corvette lying around, as I think it would be a ball running S/S, even though I probably couldn't afford it. There's just something really cool about wheels-up, flat-out runs by cars of the muscle car era...

We all should be grateful to those that went before us and made this sport what it is. The New NHRA should be VERY grateful. But their history and importance to dragracing is a moot point for this discussion, in that the 100 Mil goes to Wally, and the SPORTSMAN side of the new NHRA. The PRO side will be a topic for the new owners.

Mike ( madness & ) Mayhem

Agreed. I misconstrued your comments thinking you meant that we were deserving of an instant payout from NHRA. My bad.

All that said, I have no problem with NHRA or the track operators making a profit. It's the feeling that I'm being raped that I don't like. The argument of "if you don't like it then go race someplace else" is reasonable though. The problem is that when it comes to this type of racing, we really only have two choices, NHRA and IHRA. Neither is perfect, though IMHO IHRA is the better value at this point in time. That's not just from a payout standpoint, but taking the entire experience into account, from the schedule, to how I'm treated by the management when I'm there, to the facilities themselves. NHRA definitely has better facilities than IHRA, but they offset that advantage by making me feel like I should be kissing their feet for letting me race there.

Like many companies that I conduct business with, I would like to see NHRA improve because I see a lot of untapped potential there. In most cases though, I have more than 2 choices of where I should take my business, and if I don't see an improvement, it's very easy to switch to another vendor. Like any large company though, they generally don't care if they lose my business because it wouldn't have a large impact upon their bottom line. So, it's not until they lose business from LOTS of customers like myself that would they start to take notice. But, with few alternatives, there's plenty of other potential customers waiting in line to take my place in doing business with NHRA.

Let the name calling and hate mail begin!

Jason Oldfield
S/G & S/ST 1838