Index Change

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Dave Casey

I hope that finally they will treat runs at altitude the same as at sea level,

1.25 under sea level index gets hit,

then 1.25 under altitude index should get hit.

If those correction figures are good enough to let records be set,than they are good enough to factor horsepower period...

as far as the weather argument goes, it is simple, there are good days and bad days at all tracks, good air happens, bad air happens, and mother nature don't care if it is Atco or Denver,but one thing doesn't change and that is the distance above sea level each track is.

There is no chance that a sanctioning body is going to make adjustments for daily air density. They are looking to keep it simple, not add more complicated work. The closest thing to that I have ever seen was when there was a good tail wind and our D1 director wouldn't let us set records, I doubt that you would see that now.

I'll have to disagree with that completely. It won't work, and it is insanely unfair.

Atco, Mission, and Woodburn are all sea level or close to it. I don't think you'll ever see local weather conditions at any of those tracks correct to 1500' or more below sea level. But factored tracks do have weather that corrects to 2000' below their factored altitude. There's no such thing as a day so good at Atco, Mission, or Woodburn that the air is 2000' below sea level. So the argument that "there are good days and bad days at all tracks" doesn't hold water. Not when there are plenty of track that could never see "good days" like that. It would be absurd to factor a combination because of a run that couldn't possibly be duplicated at an unfactored track. That's one of the few things NHRA has gotten correct.

One run at a track factored at 3500' that had 1500' conditions could render a lot of cars completely useless. Especially since they lowered the indexes 3 tenths. And that run could never be duplicated under actual normal conditions.

The fact that NHRA wants to be cheap and lazy, so they don't correct their factors, is no reason to punish racers.