Bracket Racing vs Stock/Super Stock Racing

[Mike Schwartz]

Originally Posted by Mike Pearson

And your point is? If the quota was higher there could be more heads up races. The low quota is not helping this situation. Stock and SS are handicap classes so this is the norm. I have been racing Super Stock for about 35 years and other than a dial in it is nothing like bracket racing. We choose to do this and enjoy the rules and comraderie among our competitors. It's not for everyone. The vast majority of the class racers would like the quotas raised to a level they were before the current NHRA management took power. The added classes with the factory race cars has lessened the chance for heads up match ups. Super Stock has over 100 classes and Stock has near that so you could have a national event with out any duplicate classes. This probably won't happen because there are classes that are more popular than others. I happen to race in one of the more popular SS classes. We have had as many as 7 cars in my class at a points race recently

I looked at an National event with 128-car fields and (154-169 total entries), the 2016 US Nationals. Again, I used the results published in DRC.

In SS & Stk combined, there were 254 rounds of eliminations.
Of those, only 6 were heads up (2.4%). [ FS/XX x2, H/SA x2, FS/H, B/SA - none in SS]
And once again, none of the finalists or semifinalists had to face a heads-up run in eliminations.
Comparing the biggest event, and the most recent event, the results are almost identical regardless of the size of the quotas: that there is less than a 3 out of 100 chance that any match in eliminations will be heads-up.

There is nothing wrong with treating SS & Stock as performance-based categories, but my point is that performance only goes so far once eliminations start. Its is statistically more important that a driver's 'Bracket Racing' skills are top-notch. A few heads-up races aside, dialing-in accurately, cutting good lights and working the finish line are the predominate key to winning events under the current system.