65-85 under.

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by Billy Nees

Alan, your last 2 posts are "wise words from a wise man".
The only way that I could even consider an index reduction would be if it DIDN'T include the lower classes. You would have to agree that the "less than hi-performance" combos largely don't respond to or aren't included in many of the "enhancements" that have been given out over the years. Would you consider this for a minute? The L/SA index has been "screwy" (for lack of a better term) forever. Look it up. How about A thru K get -.10 (including the FS classes) and L down (including the FWD classes) get left as is? Or if A/K get -.20 and L down -.10? Would that be enough to keep the fast boys happy?

I have probably already said more than I should, or I am qualified to say. Again, we're parked, maybe for 2-5 more months, maybe for a lot longer, I don't know. I don't know if I'm through with my cancer treatments, I don't know how well or soon I will recover, and I don't know what the future holds, for me, or for my partner. I know what I want to do. God has yet to tell me what I'll get to do.


However, of course I agree, the combinations are all different. Some have gotten gifts, others have not. Almost all will gain from technological advances, some more than others.


The question becomes, do some people with some combinations have the right to hold everyone else back? That's asking a lot. Or, do some people with other combinations have the right to pull everyone else forward? Tough question.


There will always be a disparity. There will always be "the haves and the have nots," whether that be those who have time and money, and those who don't, those who want to work hard and those who want to slack, or those who have a combination with potential and those who don't.


You will, however, never stop progress. Whether it is progress you like and agree with, or progress you hate. It doesn't matter whether you like it, Barry Parker likes it, or I like it, it's going to happen, at best, we can hope to influence the direction. Trying to stop most of the progress will absolutely kill the class. It's already hard to draw a field, and a crowd to watch. Making the racing worse will not help that. We need to make the racing better, and improve the show, whether or not NHRA will promote it. Or the classes eventually die.


Perhaps those with legitimately slow combinations can get some help from NHRA in figuring out a way to more quickly move them to a class that they can compete in, without waiting years, instead of months. The problem there is, the system has been seriously "gamed", and NHRA is understandably reticent.



Those who simply refuse to invest the time, effort, and money to compete, one way or another, will eventually move on. Considering how tough Stock and Super Stock once were, that's how the classes started, and why they were separate from the brackets. It's not a matter of who does or doesn't like whom. It's a matter of the nature of a performance based class, eventually it gets serious about performance, or it dies, whether death is just the end, or a fundamental change in the class. If it ceases to be at least as performance oriented as it is now, or more, enough people absolutely will leave that death, as in the end, will be a certainty. There aren't enough "bracket" type racers to keep the classes alive as they are.



Let's be honest, the classes (Stock and Super Stock) need more competition, more speed, and lower ET's, in order to draw new competitors, and new spectators. We're still not working hard enough to get more class eliminations happening in front of more people, and we're not working hard enough to create more rewards for qualifying, for winning heads up races, etc. Whether or not it benefits any individual directly, it benefits the classes. And we're here literally arguing about whether or not to turn people loose and let them race without crippling their combination. I don't think racers or spectators are going to hang around for 1000' agreed dumps.



We need to step back and realize that some combinations have been rendered obsolete over the years, and they simply got parked, sold, or converted to street cars. we're not talking about combinations that there are tons of, we're talking about combinations that were marginal, and somewhat rare. No matter what, some combinations are going to fall by the wayside. Some people, willing to spend time and money, will save many others.


To put it simply, there's no solution that is going to make everyone happy, or keep everyone in the class. There are only solutions that are best for the class, and best for the majority. They're ALL trade offs. There will always be those who benefit, and those who don't, and some who get the short straw. The best we can hope for is continued survival of the class, and for NHRA to do good things for the class. Can there be compromise? Sure. The question is, is NHRA willing to work that hard on the classes? We may not like the answer.