Mike Cotten you are the MAN!

[Michael Beard]

If I win, I win and I won't come back for a re-run unless NHRA can prove to me, right then and there that there was a problem with their equipment that can be proven, without a doubt.

And if your red light comes on for any reason, you will calmly accept your supposed loss? If a piece of paper blows through the lights and shows you breaking out by three seconds, you'd just accept that? If a photocell hangs and you are attributed with a .150 R/T and every incremental is exactly .10 quick, you'd just accept that? If you went through the finish line in a nearly heads-up race and it was so close you couldn't even tell who got there first, and the timeslip said that your opponent got there first by .200, and you were .200 off your dial, despite all of your incrementals and mph matching another run, you'd just accept that? (Believe it or not, I've seen that happen... more than once.) Errors happen. Glitches happen. Components fail. Humans are make mistakes. I understand needing to have a level of trust in the timing system, but we also need to recognize when something's not right.

I'd be willing to wager a guess that the first winner has less than a 25% chance of winning again

I'll take that wager. In fact, it's happened, even in circumstances where there was a re-run that was demonstrably *not* called for. You're there to execute a run to the best of your ability. You can be glad, sad, or whatever when you're in the pits, the lanes, or the burnout box, but when you're on the starting line, shut it off. It's business.

When I operate an event and there's an issue, I don't even want to know who's involved, if at all possible. You need the facts and circumstances, peroid. The individuals shouldn't matter. If the situation was reversed and you come up with a different answer, there's a problem.

In my opinion, races should be won or lost on the race track by the driver's actions, not by an unexplainable glitch, particularly one that has been documented to have occurred at multiple tracks.