Graham Light, NHRA VP of Operations, wanted to give his team a pep talk headed into final eliminations day at the O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals. Today is an important day for the NHRA community as ESPN2 has live coverage slated for 2:00 to 5:00 PM, CST. Rain drenched the first of two days slated for the monumental coverage.

Light felt like a football coach whose team had experienced a tough first half of the game, through no fault of their own. The pep talk was crucial, he felt, to maintaining morale for the second half of the contest.

There was one problem with Light’s timing. Members of the “football team” of Safety Safari and track workers were too busy for a meeting. Sunday morning had been consumed with fighting drainage problems and weepers which threatened the Sunday schedule.

Graham Light orchestrates Sunday's preliminary rounds en route to live television.Graham Light, NHRA VP of Operations, wanted to give his team a pep talk headed into final eliminations day at the O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals. Today is an important day for the NHRA community as ESPN2 has live coverage slated for 2:00 to 5:00 PM, CST. Rain drenched the first of two days slated for the monumental coverage.

Light felt like a football coach whose team had experienced a tough first half of the game, through no fault of their own. The pep talk was crucial, he felt, to maintaining morale for the second half of the contest.

There was one problem with Light’s timing. Members of the “football team” of Safety Safari and track workers were too busy for a meeting. Sunday morning had been consumed with fighting drainage problems and weepers which threatened the Sunday schedule.

“They’ve been at it since 5:30 this morning,” said Light Sunday morning while directing operations from the Royal Purple Raceway race control room. “We’ve been fighting to dry the track and fighting some drainage problems. Our initial plan was to get everyone together, but we are already well into Plan B. It was important to ‘rah-rah’ the troops prior to putting our plan in motion. Guess we’ll be confined to the radio for this.”

The most important lesson for Light is in understanding his and the team’s limitations.

“The frustrating part about the weather is there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Light. “It is what it is. We just try to make the decisions which are the fairest for the majority. For the live television, Sunday is the most critical day.”

Sunday will also be a fun challenge.

“It really is fun,” said Light. “We’ve never done the semifinals and finals, but we have done the finals a few times.”

Light and his team have actually been preparing for this day for the last couple of seasons.

“They elevated their game, so we got with our guys, from the staging lanes to the starters to the trackside observers to the guys in turnaround. We know it’s going to take a concentrated effort from every one of our guys. Everybody’s job is important in completing the race. Every thirty seconds you can save adds up.”

Their biggest test came two years ago at the traditionally oildown-challenged Las Vegas-2 event, when on race day they created a self-imposed challenge. The goal was to create a safe, but quicker staged event.

“We simply challenged ourselves to pick up 30 seconds on each pairing,” Light explained. “We wanted to pick up time but not at the cost of compromising safety. But, we knew we could do it. We knew if we could pick up thirty seconds on every pair, we could pick up as much as two hours on the program’s elapsed time. Sometimes the two hours can make the difference when you have weather or curfew, in finishing on the scheduled day instead of the next.”

Light said his team set an unpublished deadline of 4:00 p.m. at this particular event.

“We put the plan in motion and stressed to everyone to put a little extra hustle in their step all day long,” Light said. “We needed to make smart decisions quickly. We came together and made it work. It was really encouraging listening to the team over the radio, working together to make it happen.”

The team succeeded with minutes to spare, and Light, a former drag racer, confirmed what he always knew about his team. Staging safe, but fast-paced entertainment is as important to his team as winning a race is to a driver.

“When you look at it, our people are no different than those race teams out there in the pits,” Light said. “The racers want to win the race and we wanted to make our race smoother and more time efficient. We were determined to make our race safe, efficient and entertaining. Success for us on this particular day was measured in whether we could meet our self-imposed deadline. If we didn’t make it, we lost. If we did, we patted one another on the back.

“This particular day showed how important everyone’s job was in the grand scheme of the day. It was real interesting and encouraging to see the teamwork executed toward the goal. They were beat at the end of the day but it was a fun challenge for everyone.

“We may attack it differently but our NHRA team and the racers are under the same umbrella in that we want to achieve success in what we do,” Light said. “We all want to win. The race teams who reach the finals have the same goals we do, and this is to make this weekend a success.”  

Light confirmed there will be no speeding up of the first two rounds for the live show.

“The teams all realize that live television will be a major shot in the arm for our sport,” said Light. “In today’s social media environment, the results of these races are transmitted throughout the world just a few seconds after they happen.”

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