I stole that line from the trailer door of Dan Ritchen’s Iron Horse dragster.  Ritchens hailed from the Beehive State and opined that making progress in Utah was nigh unto impossible considering the state’s hidebound ways.  The same could be said about NHRA Drag Racing, but in this instance it’s the racers who appear to be working as hard as they can to keep the wheels of progress from turning.

Before the four-wide race I wrote that it would not be the end of the world.  The race is over and the world didn’t come to an end, but from the way the competitors cried foul after the fact you would think the event’s rules demanded not only four cars at a time, but four starting from each end of the track.

If you’ve been paying attention for the last few years you’ve heard racers and sponsors bemoaning the fact that drag racing has become stale, and new ideas and concepts must be tried to help the sport’s audience reach expand.  A bigger audience drawn by more on-track excitement and innovation results in better sponsorship support because the larger audience makes the sport “worth” more to the sponsors.

I stole that line from the trailer door of Dan Ritchen’s Iron Horse dragster.  Ritchens hailed from the Beehive State and opined that making progress in Utah was nigh unto impossible considering the state’s hidebound ways.  The same could be said about NHRA Drag Racing, but in this instance it’s the racers who appear to be working as hard as they can to keep the wheels of progress from turning.

Before the four-wide race I wrote that it would not be the end of the world.  The race is over and the world didn’t come to an end, but from the way the competitors cried foul after the fact you would think the event’s rules demanded not only four cars at a time, but four starting from each end of the track.

If you’ve been paying attention for the last few years you’ve heard racers and sponsors bemoaning the fact that drag racing has become stale, and new ideas and concepts must be tried to help the sport’s audience reach expand.  A bigger audience drawn by more on-track excitement and innovation results in better sponsorship support because the larger audience makes the sport “worth” more to the sponsors.

Our sport – and based on the naysayers who populate most of the drag racing message boards this is a commonly held belief – has entered an era in which nothing is going the way it should.  We’re racing to 1,000 feet rather than the treasured quarter mile.  Who’s responsible for this travesty?  NHRA?  The racers?  Was this a knee jerk reaction to the tragic death of Scott Kalitta?  And who was responsible for that?  In this writer’s opinion that was a completely preventable accident (remember, I used the word “opinion” and made no factual statement), with the blame lying equally at the feet of the NHRA and the PRO because it seems no one from either group inspected the track before the racing commenced and took note of the ESPN boom camera hanging over the fence in the middle of the sand trap.

But who’s responsible for the fact that we’re still racing to 1,000 feet?  Was there a way of slowing the cars to the point where full quarter mile racing was possible?  I think so, but there’s been zero progress in finding a formula, and before someone from Glendora starts talking about their brilliant engine combination, puh-leeze spare me.  I may have the mechanical expertise of an air cleaner, but I know guys who build massive horsepower, and not one of them mentions the NHRA plan without laughing aloud.  Surely the racers could have come up with something, but progress in that area has been zero because of the egos of the tuners and car owners involved.  No one seems capable of setting aside their personal agenda in favor of finding a mutually acceptable solution.

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While some of us consider quarter mile racing vitally important, the issue here isn’t one of safety or how to go about slowing the cars.  It’s about the fact that there’s been no real progress on this issue -- from either side.

Like it or not, the Countdown represents progress.  Like it or not (and I know most old-timers hate it), the Countdown is here to stay.  It’s generated a lot of publicity, something the racers complain they don’t get enough of.  The Pedregon-Force confrontation at Indy would have gotten a lot of pub regardless, but it was the Countdown and not making the cut that drove that story.

You may think the Countdown flies in the face of tradition, but I hate to break it to you, you aren’t the target audience for it.  It’s the casual fan who’s the target.  If a tight points race entices more newspaper scribes and TV journalists to file reports, and it brings more people to the track, and convinces more people to sit in front of their televisions, the program is working.  What we think doesn’t mean s---, because we’re the hard-core group that’s a small part of the big picture.  Without the casual fan, drag racing is going nowhere, because as the hard core audience gets older and less interested, the total audience shrinks.  We need those fans who may not know the difference between Larry Morgan and Morgan Lucas, yet buy tickets to enjoy the visceral excitement of drag racing in person.

Too many of our fans – the hard core people for sure – seem to view drag racing from the perspective of “us” and “them,” “us” being their fellow travelers and “them” being anyone who wasn’t around for the Garlits-Carbone burndown at Indy in ’71.  Without “them” we have no sport.

Then there’s the Four-wide Nationals.  Regardless of what you might think, that first effort was absolutely not a fair way of judging the concept.  First, because nothing works exactly the way the organizers hope it will the first time around.  And second, until a four-wide, points-paying race takes place in ideal weather we will never know for sure if the fans – the casual fans -- like it or not. 

Twenty-seven thousand tickets were scanned at zMax on Saturday.  That, by any yardstick, is a great turnout, and it was evident on television.  Sunday’s crowd was weak, but let’s remember it was raining from Maine to Florida.  Even casual fans know we don’t race in the rain.  If they have a four-wide race in great weather and no one shows up, it’s then safe to say, Glendora, we have a problem.  Until then we just won’t know for sure.

On Friday a petition began making the rounds at Concord asking owners and drivers for their vote on whether or not they’d be willing to participate in another four-wide points-paying event.  The petition was an “official” PRO effort that sought votes from both members and non-members, and there’s been some question about who actually instituted the ballot.  That’s irrelevant.  What counts is how it was completely mishandled by the racers.

As someone who has taken the NHRA to task on any number of occasions, more than once not just suggesting but stating outright that the entire management team in Glendora should be sacked, I now find myself sympathetic to their position.

Early in the week following the race the poll results were leaked to the press (the official tally was 60 votes against, with three votes in favor of a repeat).  As Terry Blount titled his ESPN column, “What are the NHRA racers thinking?”  Recognizing that a number of racers won’t be happy with me for saying this, what the hell indeed, were they thinking?

The PRO and its members have usually been their own worst enemies.  Their abject failure at maintaining even a semblance of unanimity in their dealings with the NHRA has been well-documented.  This latest gaffe certainly earns neither style or degree of difficulty points.  The very word “PRO” should be indicative of a professional organization, but leaking their letter in advance of Tom Compton’s having received it was bush league.

A number of drivers were interviewed during the TV show from zMax, and while some did express concerns over staging procedures, not a single one of them had a negative thing to say about four-wide racing.  On camera, at least, every interviewee appeared excited, exhilarated and happy.  So, are we to assume they put on their PR faces for TV while hating the four-wide concept?  Remember, NHRA does not control the content of the TV shows.  ESPN has total control, so if a driver had something explosive and negative to say it would have been aired, because TV loves controversy.

Since then more than one driver has admitted that after seeing his car owner’s vote he wasn’t inclined to vote in opposition.  If you were being paid to drive wouldn’t you be a little hesitant to openly defy the guy who provides your livelihood?

The PRO is somewhat rudderless at present without a president and it shows in the content of their letter to NHRA.  Under their list of concerns is “Safety first – we believe that the probability of an accident is greatly increased while safety is decreased.”  There was one incident at zMax involving cars running on “different” drag strips, yet the Safety Safari handled both without a hitch.  No one sat trapped in a burning vehicle while the safety crew rushed to another incident.  There was more than enough manpower and equipment to handle multiple accidents at the same time.  The NHRA brought in additional manpower and hardware for those very reasons.

Again proving the PRO is desperate for leadership, later in the letter the organization writes, “The PRO Board however, is not opposed to discussing the possibility of a 4-wide exhibition or all-star race in the future.”  Huh?  Didn’t you just say there was a safety issue and it was too dangerous to race four-wide?  Well, which is it, because it can’t be unsafe to race four-wide for points yet safe enough to race four-wide in an all-star format.

I’ll get flamed for this, but I promise you if Bruton Smith announced that his fall race was going to be four-wide for points and he’s going to post an additional $50,000 to win, instead of bitching you’d be hearing a lot of “Get out of the way, I’ve got Lane 3!”  But that’s not going to happen.  There will be no four-wide racing during the Countdown in 2010.

The second issue raised by the PRO was “Confusion – there was total confusion among drivers, teams and fans.” The letter identifies staging procedures and too many cars racing at once as factors.  Yeah, it was kinda hard to keep up with four cars going off at once, but this was just the first time they raced four-wide in a serious manner, and I’m willing to wager the fans will quickly pick up on things the second time around. NASCAR fans can track 43 cars and we’re supposed to believe ours aren’t smart enough to handle four?  Don’t insult them that way.

When it comes to addressing the staging “confusion,” look no further than John Force.  He won the race by spending as much time as possible watching other classes stage and race.  He did that to nail down the staging procedure.  He learned his lessons well, so why didn’t other “confused” drivers do the same thing?  Nobody was barring them from watching from behind the line.  Besides, these guys are supposed to be professionals and professionals know how to race or, if they don’t, they darn sure figure out how to in a hurry.

I do agree with the PRO’s concerns about sponsor identification.  That is a major problem that someone’s going to have to figure out, because if your car was in Lane 1 or 2, and the camera was shooting from outside of Lane 4, sponsor identification was minimized.  Clear, in-focus sponsor logo exposure is critically important – for everyone.

Let’s not forget an extremely important point.  From start to finish this race generated more print and electronic publicity for NHRA Drag Racing and it’s sponsored teams than has any other race barring those in which a fatality has occurred.  Publicity results in more paying fans and higher television ratings.  More fans and higher ratings ultimately results in more sponsorship support for those intelligent enough to market themselves proficiently.  The racers have been demanding more positive national publicity, and the Four-wide Nationals gave it to them.

So what did the Four-Wide Nationals accomplish?

1.    It took the “stale” out of drag racing and infused new excitement into the sport.

2.    It at least temporarily silenced the quarter-mile-or-nothing argument.  The casual fans – those without whom the sport can’t survive – don’t seem to care very much how long the track is as long as the cars are loud and exotic.

3.    It generated the kind of publicity the sport hasn’t seen in a long time, another issue the racers have been complaining about.

What happened in the much-hyped meeting between NHRA and the PRO board can be explained thusly -- the racers blinked – again.  Tom Compton went into that meeting determined to give four-wide racing a second chance, and I don’t think the PRO had a single argument to dissuade him.

I believe that between the time the ballot began circulating in Concord and the racers got together in Las Vegas so many had been in contact with the board members expressing their misgivings about the way they voted and the manner in which the whole thing went down that PRO was like a birthday party balloon the next morning – deflated and flat.  The group spent more time trying to ferret out who leaked everything to the media than they did in actually addressing the very issues they’d raised in their ill-conceived and poorly written missive.

The PRO could learn a valuable lesson about dealing with management by observing the demeanor of NFL Players Association president DeMaurice Smith.  The players are locked in a death struggle with the owners over a new collective bargaining agreement, and it appears likely there’ll be a lockout by the owners in 2011.  Smith has spilled no details of their talks with the owners, made no inflammatory statements and certainly hasn’t leaked any documents. 

The competitors did themselves no favors with the unprofessional manner in which they handled their objections to the four-wide format.  This should have been handled quietly, behind the scenes, so that to the outside world the sport might have continued to appear strong, focused and unified.  It now appears anything but.

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