Gas Money

[Billy Nees]

To the best of my knowledge the APBA (American Power Boat Assn.) has a policy for paying tow money to preentered racers in all classes for certain events. On the other hand, they don't pay a purse, you race for trophies and points towards a world championship. They also have a voting membership that lets the Sportsmen (the majority) dictate policy for the Pros (the minority). True.

[Terry Cain]

"NHRA will NEVER give sportsman classes money just to qualify. Especially not enough to really offset fuel costs."

Alan,
Never say never. Bush said he'd never put a time frame on withdrawal. Hmm, look what's in the news.
NHRA would if, it was to their advantage. No reason in the world, with the bargaining power NHRA has (members) they couldn't do a deal for gas cards and get a discount on the deal. They could then give qualifiers a gift card for say $150.00 worth of gas and it would cost NHRA maybe $100.00.
They could also negotiate a deal for gas cards and sell to members at a discount. Say, $100.00 card would cost $90.00

Once they get all this going they could build an old folks home and we could all live there and BS and bench race all day. (Just kidding)

[Alan Roehrich]

For the most part, NHRA's concern for their advantage stops at their bottom line. When their main focus is on the pro categories, TV time, and a sponsor for the pro side of the organization, it just isn't likely we'll get anything for towing or qualifying. Giving us a gas card that costs them $100 is like giving us National Event entry for Division race prices. I don't see it happening. Not even if we were able to have a major organized boycott, which ain't happening. Shoot, some races have car counts almost as low as 1/2 what they were a year or two ago, and NHRA hasn't offered much, if anything. And they aren't likely to.

Look at it like this, a hundred cars in a class is $25K for NHRA, 4 because of class rotation, and the fact that Comp and Top Alcohol don't generate the car count. And you don't see too many races with 4 classes with a car count of 100, either. But we'll leave it there for the sake of argument. To make the math easy, we'll say they pay $5K in purse to each class, counting round money, even though they don't. So that leaves $20K per class. That's $80K we generate, no fans included, before tech, time, space, and administrative costs. Then say you get the gas card deal. And qualify 64 cars. That's another $6400 out of that $20K, and now you're down to $13,600. But wait, if you qualify 64 cars, and send the rest home, how long before only 70 or so cars show at a race. Now they only get $17,500 to start with. Make the same cost subtractions, and you get $6100. Times 4 classes, and you gross $24,400, for 4 classes, again, BEFORE they take out for tech, time, space, and administrative costs. I just don't see it happening that way.

But I agree Terry, it's nice to dream.

[Myron Piatek]

Doesn't NHRA still help pay Summit Series divisional ET winners for their trip to the world finals in Pomona?
I got a little back in 1980 (the first time they crowned world ET champions, then shelved the idea for many years) when they had it in Ontario, CA

[Ed Fernandez]

Originally Posted by Alan Roehrich

For the most part, NHRA's concern for their advantage stops at their bottom line. When their main focus is on the pro categories, TV time, and a sponsor for the pro side of the organization, it just isn't likely we'll get anything for towing or qualifying. Giving us a gas card that costs them $100 is like giving us National Event entry for Division race prices. I don't see it happening. Not even if we were able to have a major organized boycott, which ain't happening. Shoot, some races have car counts almost as low as 1/2 what they were a year or two ago, and NHRA hasn't offered much, if anything. And they aren't likely to.

Look at it like this, a hundred cars in a class is $25K for NHRA, 4 because of class rotation, and the fact that Comp and Top Alcohol don't generate the car count. And you don't see too many races with 4 classes with a car count of 100, either. But we'll leave it there for the sake of argument. To make the math easy, we'll say they pay $5K in purse to each class, counting round money, even though they don't. So that leaves $20K per class. That's $80K we generate, no fans included, before tech, time, space, and administrative costs. Then say you get the gas card deal. And qualify 64 cars. That's another $6400 out of that $20K, and now you're down to $13,600. But wait, if you qualify 64 cars, and send the rest home, how long before only 70 or so cars show at a race. Now they only get $17,500 to start with. Make the same cost subtractions, and you get $6100. Times 4 classes, and you gross $24,400, for 4 classes, again, BEFORE they take out for tech, time, space, and administrative costs. I just don't see it happening that way.

But I agree Terry, it's nice to dream.

They also pay the pros from our entry fees I believe.

Ed

[Alan Roehrich]

Admittedly my math is a little fast and loose, but there's already not near enough there to pay any of the pros, and my figures are gross, not net.

[Terry Cain]

Alan,
Add in membership, gate, souvenir's, etc. and TV rights.

[Alan Roehrich]

Yeah, they get $64 each a year. And they say the Dragster absorbs 1/2 of that.

I doubt they get much in the way of TV rights for us. We get one show for an hour per event, and only alcohol cars get covered (we personally actually got 15 seconds at the end of the Gators' show).

NHRA considers the pros as the ones drawing the vast majority of the gate, and if you've looked at souvenirs, you know NHRA makes their money off of their own stuff and off of the pros.

I'd LOVE to say we generate more than we do, and that we have a bunch of leverage. I just don't see that we do. We're not well marketed, NHRA doesn't want to and doesn't care to, and we are too busy beating each other to death to act in our own best interest.