Another low car count?

[Marvin Robinson]

Look, guys, there are two trains of thought here... some guys want to compete against other drivers with their driving skills and ADDITIONALLY compete their CAR against all other cars in the class (and eliminator) performance wise. That means testing, tuning, trying new parts/adjustments to make your car equal to or better than the best of it's kind.

Then there is bracket racing, where you JUST want to compete against other DRIVERS to win, the car is just the tool to get the job done and you can pick whatever car you have a liking for, and use whatever parts you decide will work for you. You can also pre-determine what budget will be comfortable for you, and compete within that budget - that, to a large extent, will determine what performance levels at which you can successfully compete, but once decided, you can build a car and stick with that combination as long as you like and stay competitive. Both approaches are valid, but which one appeals to you most depends on your own personal makeup.

For those technically inclined, S/SS/Comp holds an innate fascination with extracting performance, and doing it better than the other guy. Also by it's very rules-driven nature for parts origins and allowable modifications, makes achieving any given level of performance more expensive than doing it with unlimited choices of parts & modifications. Longevity of parts and combos is often sacrificed in search of more performance, and the necessary maintenance to stay in the hunt are part of the landscape.

For most bracket racers, consistency and simplicity are the key factors to winning, and these goals are much easier and less expensive to achieve, and constant upgrading and testing is not absolutely necessary to maintain your competitiveness.

A lot of racers enjoy participating in both camps, but the core of these two groups are motivated differently, so they see the racing in a different light from each other, and have differing concerns... there is no reason to bicker over which is best, or who the real racers are, just understand they are different, and work on how to structure races to work best for each group (and how to make each the most appealing to the paying spectator).

As to the car counts, it's obvious that NHRA programs address the index racers in a more satisfactory way than for the Class racers. Also, especially with the newest "enhancements", the choice and timing of what races to attend and when to enter with a Class car depends a lot on the personal assessment of my ability to have the car properly prepared and competitive at that particular race & time. I think this may be the same for a lot of other Class racers and a contributor to the low car counts prior to raceday. So that still leaves the question: to improve car counts, how do we make it better for the Class racer??? Who should be making the decisions, and how do we implement them? (How much does NHRA care?)

I wonder, if we compare the number of index cars that COULD enter, to the number that attend a given race, and do the same for the Class cars, would there be a similar percentage drop?