[Jason Oldfield]

I agree Eddie. I personally am not a big fan of the existing points structure. As it stands now, "you MUST attend 4 in division events to qualify for any season ending points championship or award program" (as per the rulebook). From there, it's the same as NHRA, best 3 of 5 nationals, and 5 of 8 divisionals. But, how many of us actually have the money to maximize our chances by attending 13 races, let alone hit the minimum 8?

Granted, I'd like to be able to one day say that I was world champ, but unless I win a couple of those national events, that's a losing proposition from a money standpoint, unless I lived in NC ("Yippee, look how dumb I am...I'm the IHRA world champ, and in the end after you subtract my winnings it only cost me about 10 grand to be able to say that!") Now granted, none of us are doing this for the money, but at some point you have to say enough is enough (unless you're independently wealthy, which unfortunately, I am not).

So, from that standpoint, I like the change. But, that said, I'm not really fond of the "win and you're in" philosophy. How about reduce the number of races that you can claim points at? Rather than best 3 of 5 and 5 of 8, how about best 1 of 3 and 3 of 5? With some double and triple events like last year, most racers wouldn't need to travel but more than two or three times (I could have gone to Pittsburgh and Skyview, 12 hours of total round trip road time, and had 1 national and 3 divisional races to my credit).

If IHRA is really enamored with the run-off at the end of the year idea, have all the division winners go to Rockingham and run off for the championship (I personally don't think that the guy that finished 2nd in their respective division should be able to be world champ, so I would not include them in the runoff). The other problem I have with the Rockingham runoff is the travel cost associated with it. For a lot of racers, it would cost more for them to travel to Rockingham than to meet their best 1 of 3 and 3 of 5 race quota. And this change is supposed to be about saving money, right? Though, I'm sure everyone that was in the title hunt would find their way there, one way or the other.

So, I applaud IHRA for making a change, but I'm not sure this is the change I would have made (and with that, I will stop writing before I start getting more hate mail).