Gator class teardowns

[jmcarter]

Dan, think most have realized this is the new reality and I (and perhaps many others) appreciate your public acknowledgement of it given your stature in Class racing. Unfortunately, the sports world offers far too many examples where people were easily influenced by 'fame' to blatantly break the rules. Baseball doping, electric motors within the frame rails of bicycles, etc demonstrate that the peers of such cheaters are reluctant to call them out. One has to wonder if the current 'tech' (non-teardown) approach will extend even to Indy and if so then what happens? Perhaps NHRA takes another .3 off the indexes because people can suddenly easily go 1.5 under? Are we then just competing in 'crate motor' classes?

One of the downsides to the Gators great attendance (partially due to weather of course) is that it might reinforce the NHRA notion that their current approach is correct as evidenced by a better bottom line. However the playing field changes; however, I'm sure the winners will do that by virtue of hard work and true skill...good luck in your quest for 100 (and many more).

An aside on the Gators, did anybody else notice that with two pair left in the second round of Stock class eliminations that NHRA brought out the Leah Drag Pak/ Papa John Camaro 'match race' and that they had to pull the tractors back twice so that class eliminations could resume? Ridiculous....about as much as the first round of Top Fuel on Sunday when the 'filler' cars made embarrassing showings....they might as well go to eight car fields and save everyone the time. Face it; when Connie, John, and Don finally get too old their show will fold, supposedly to be replaced by 64 car Pro Mod fields with the assorted belt sander, no prep drag radial classes thrown in to round out the program.