NHRA FOUR-WIDE NATS BRINGS FORMAT CHANGE
The NHRA is going four-wide.
NHRA President Tom Compton, zMAX Dragway owner Bruton Smith and 14-time Funny Car champion John Force were on hand Thursday to announce the inaugural Four-Wide Nationals to be held March 25-28. All four lanes of zMAX Dragway’s concrete will be used for the Full Throttle Drag Racing Series event.
The announcement comes four months after the NHRA conducted a four-lane exhibition at zMAX during the Carolinas Nationals in September.
“I hope all the fans are excited about this as I am, man,” Smith said. “We are expecting it to be standing-room only here in March.”
Fans may love the idea, but Force conceded that some in the sport may not like such a dramatic change.
“We’ve gotta grow,” Force said. “Like Obama says, we’ve got to have change.
“I don’t know how the other racers feel. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be exciting. You’re talking over 30,000 horsepower at one time. You’re talking over 1,200 mph out there on that race track. We did it. My driver, Mike Neff, won it. I was a runner-up. It was exciting.
“Let me tell you, I embarrassed myself at the press conference. We came right back in to talk about what had taken place. … When I drove this four-lane race, I ran in here and I was like Tom Cruise on Oprah, jumping up and down, screaming. Everyone said, ‘He went nuts,’ because it was that exciting and thrilling.”
Compton said the idea of a four-lane national event started when Smith’s Speedway Motorsports Inc. built The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“Bruton doesn’t like to mess around,” Compton said. “I was driving up for our first event there, and I was mobbed by reporters when I got out of my care. I said, ‘What’s this?’ They go, ‘Burton just announced you’re going to have a second event.’ I said, ‘We haven’t even had our first event.’
“That’s how he works. At the time, we weren’t sure how to do (four-wide), to be quite honest. There’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.”
How will it work?
Qualifying will be conducted in all four lanes
Each category winner will be determined in three rounds of eliminations
The first two drivers across the finish line in each of the first rounds of eliminations will advance to the second round
The first two drivers to cross the finish line in each of the second rounds will advance to the final
Each final round will include four drivers, with one driver as the winner and one as second, third and fourth
The NHRA said its Lucas Oil series will be conducted in the traditional two-lane format, running some classes in the left two lanes and others in the right.The NHRA is going four-wide.
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