Some nitro teams on the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series were surprised to learn the NHRA hired a private marketing firm to investigate if the change to 1000' racing, from 1320', five years ago is responsible for a fall off in attendance.

While the NHRA awaits results from the independently administered survey, a debate is racing in both the pits and the grandstands. There are race fans who want to see a return to 1320' racing, while team owners and drivers in the Top Fuel and Funny Car divisions believe racing to the 1,000' mark is safer and more cost effective.

The two sides, fans versus competitors, appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum when talking about what is best for NHRA racing at the top two levels.

Some nitro teams on the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series were surprised to learn the NHRA hired a private marketing firm to investigate if the change to 1000' racing, from 1320', five years ago is responsible for a fall off in attendance.

While the NHRA awaits results from the independently administered survey, a debate is racing in both the pits and the grandstands. There are race fans who want to see a return to 1320' racing, while team owners and drivers in the Top Fuel and Funny Car divisions believe racing to the 1,000' mark is safer and more cost effective.

The two sides, fans versus competitors, appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum when talking about what is best for NHRA racing at the top two levels.

Top Fuel racer Bob Vandergriff Jr. realizes he’s in the vocal minority of his peers regarding the issue. He wants to see drag racing return to a quarter-mile.

“I think it was one of the worst decisions made since I started racing,” said Vandergriff Jr. “I said that when they did it. I don’t think it is ever good when you are trying to market and sell a product, to shorten or reduce the amount of product you are trying to sell. [Selling this sport] is something I do every day to agencies and companies. When you’re trying to sell something that’s less, it’s never a good thing. We didn’t need to change the dynamic that's been there from the start. It has been based on those fundamentals for the last 60 years.
 
Top Fuel racer Bob Vandergriff Jr. realizes he’s in the vocal minority of his peers regarding the issue. He wants to see drag racing return to a quarter-mile. “I think by judging from the fans’ response, and those fans are the lifeblood of our sport, if they are not happy with what we are doing, it doesn’t matter what we think. You have to please the customer, any businessman knows that. In hindsight, looking back at it, I think the realization is this [1000-foot racing] might have been a bad decision. It’s always hard to go backwards and to say we are just going to go back to 1320 with the way our cars are now may not exactly be the right answer. I think we need to look at how to go back to the 1320, if that’s what people identify with and want to see. As team owners and drivers we need to find a way to make our cars viable running to 1320 feet.
 
“You look at the NFL. They have problems with players getting more and more concussions. The players have gotten bigger, stronger and faster. But, they aren’t reducing the field size so that players are running at reduced speeds into one another. They are looking at ways to address the problem while not changing the fundamentals of the sport. I feel that fans of any sport would rebel against a fundamental change that impacts the basic premise of what a sport is based on and maybe that's what we've seen in drag racing.”

Jim Head, who has since stepped away from driving to serve as a crew chief, believes returning to 1320 racing will potentially kill the value of what has been an incredible show of parity for the last five years. He’s of the belief making longer runs once again will have no effect on diminished attendance.

“I think we are dealing with a mountain out of a molehill,” said Head. “When things are tough economic times, and in motorsports in particular, people want to blame anything they can get their hands on. I don’t think the downturn in economics had anything to do with the distance we race nitro cars.

“We have asked the NHRA for statistics and just how many emails are they getting, how many emails of complaints. I think it is a very small vocal majority of people who talk about quarter-mile. I have called it 1320 all of my life. On the same token, I’ve had lots of people ask me, 'what’s 1320?'

“The parity in our sport is unprecedented. To change the formula, which you will have to make major changes to run the quarter-mile, and it will be extremely expensive; you won’t believe just how bad it will upset the parity. No matter what you do, it is going to affect it.”

CompetitionPlus.com asked a number of Top Fuel tuners, drivers and crew chiefs if there is a ball park figure of what making the switch from 1000 to 1320 would be. Many agreed the number will be contingent on the NHRA’s formula to slow the nitro cars to a reasonable speed. One leading tuner suggested with the implementation of new superchargers, fuel system components and testing, the magic number could be in the ballpark of $250,000 per car for a multi-car operation.

Bob Vandergriff Jr. says whatever the cost, it’s necessary for the betterment of the sport.

“That’s an unknown,” Vandergriff admitted. “We’re not going to change anything on my car; we will run the same cylinder heads and blowers. If it costs me $100,000 more per year, but it’s better for the sport, if it helps grow the sport back to the levels it was, or exceeds those, then I need to look at that.”

Dickie Venables, crew chief for Matt Hagan, believes a $250,000 investment to make the switch sounds accurate.

“I suppose it's probably pretty close,” said Venables. “I haven't thought a lot about it but basically what I think you would run into tune up wise for the engine is obviously you're going another 320 feet so our blowers have gotten better over the years so I think you would have to reconfigure those somehow. That's going to take money for sure. Timing, what kind of timing curve are we going to be working with as far what NHRA would want? I think that's something else we would have to consider.”

Even though Vandergriff is for a return to the quarter-mile, he’s boldly against the race teams having to shoulder the expense alone. If the NHRA wants a return to quarter-mile he believes they should pitch in for the testing. With such an investment, there’s a strong likelihood these costs could be passed onto the fans as well, with increased ticket prices.
 
“The NHRA needs to look at, if this is going to cost [the racers] more money, how do we help them offset the costs?” Vandergriff asked. “Do we drop a race? Do we raise the purses? Somehow it needs to be a two way street for both sides. If it is going to cost me more money but is in the best interest of the sport to go back, I need to find a way to do that. NHRA also needs to look at it and say, “If it is going to cost them more money, then we need to find a way to offset that.”
Jim Head, right, shown with crew chief Johnny Davis, believes returning to 1320 racing will potentially kill the value of what has been an incredible show of parity for the last five years. He’s of the belief making longer runs once again will have no effect on diminished attendance. (NHRA.com photo)
“Everyone has to pitch in and make it better. And if so, then I am all for it. It can’t always be one-sided and fall on the team.”

Head believes the challenge for the NHRA and the teams will be in refining a combination which he says hasn’t changed much in the last fifteen years. The switch to 1000-foot racing didn’t incur as much expense because racers weren’t racing to a full track. Now, the tuners would be challenged with lengthening the fuse to run 320 feet more, even if they are running with restrictions aimed at slowing them down.

Just the fact the basic nitro combination hasn’t changed much since the late 1990s is something Head believes will add a major variable to the equation. This could be a variable he believes could seriously damage the quality of nitro racing in terms of the show.

“That’s incredible when you look at it,” said Head. “My first 20 years, the formula would change every year. When the formula got perfected 15 years or so ago, that brought the parity into this type of racing. We can run 12 to 13 Funny Cars and have them within .07 of a second. The dragsters are the same way. Back in the good old days, you could have four tenths between low elapsed time and No. 16. That wasn’t a once in a while thing. That was every race. That’s not parity. If you ever did something to change the formula, you will rue the day because of the lack of parity. That’s not even figuring the expense or the amount of oil you can expect on the racing surface.

“When you lose the parity that’s when the people who are two tenths off the pace start doing stupid stuff to try and pick up two tenths. My car is within .05 of the low elapsed time in Vegas. I don’t have to do stupid stuff to be low elapsed time.

“This sport will suffer for it, the oildown stats will increase. We will all suffer financially for it. It will be a big deal.”

And in terms of oildowns, Head believes this will become the mortal enemy of the race fans, the very ones the NHRA seeks to fill the stands. Head said the simplest adjustments to the combination can have devastating effects.

“These things are so sensitive,” Head said. “The difference between having these things right or wrong, is BOOM! Bodies off and on fire, and oil on the track. It is that sensitive. When you change any part of that formula, and you have the lesser experienced teams … oh boy. The big teams will figure it out.

“You can say what you want about our sport with the 1000 versus 1320, but the worst thing to happen to drag racing was the oildown. It’s never been fixed and has both its good times and the bad. Putting oil on the track always creates a mass exodus of fans out of the grandstands. They just get up and leave. When we get six in a row, don’t think these fans who have paid their hard-earned money for tickets won’t get up and walk out. I’ve seen this too many times. I promise you it wasn’t because we were racing 1000 feet. They’d stay if I was racing 300 feet, as long as I was racing. They get sick of watching the grease sweep. Wonder how many of these fans we’ve lost?”

Head means no disrespect to the NHRA’s tech department, but he, along with many of his peers don’t have a lot of confidence the sanctioning body can develop a solution to precipitate a return to quarter-mile racing.

“I will tell you there’s not one crew chief out here who has confidence in the NHRA’s tech department’s ability to lead us down any path. You can quote me. At least not in nitromethane. I’m not faulting them because this is a very difficult task.

“I think if you put the greatest minds together and we’ve tried a couple of times, the Alan Johnsons, Mike Greens, Mike Neffs, Jimmy Procks, and get all of the best minds together, they don’t even have confidence they can lead us down the technical path. It’s that hard. They even tried the little blowers and it didn’t even slow the thing down. It still ran a .10 or a .12. I guess that didn’t work.”

Right now, Bob Vandergriff Sr., President of the Professional Racers Association, says his group isn’t necessarily waiting on the results of the NHRA’s survey to determine their stance. He believes the downturn in fan attendance is largely economy related and not distance. But, he says, his group will look at the big picture.

“We still are willing to do whatever is best for the sport,” Vandergriff Sr. confirmed.

This is not an admission they are willing to get behind a movement to return to the 1320 with fuel cars in their present configuration.

“Well we're not sure,” he said. “We're concerned about safety going back to 1320; cost converting the cars to where they will run back to that. A lot of different things.”

A suggestion Top Fuel and Funny Car teams could run 1000' races at some tracks and 1320' races at other tracks is not a path seen as an equitable solution to help increase fan attendance or help curtail costs.

“I don't think so,” Vandergriff Sr. said. “It's just hard to do. Most of the race tracks can accommodate 1000 feet with no trouble. Actually all the race tracks can accommodate it, they have been. Even Pomona with the shortness of that track could accommodate 1320 if you know what you were doing. The biggest problem we have is drivers keeping their foot in it through the quarter mile when they shouldn't to start with.”
John Force, the most decorated driver in nitro racing, is all for helping the sport. The 16-time champion doesn’t believe going back to quarter-mile nitro racing will fix the ills NHRA faces.
A source close to the situation has told CompetitionPlus.com the NHRA would likely be in a no-win situation for determining which tracks could safely accommodate 1320' racing. While injury is possible regardless of the length of the race, no one has been critically, or even seriously injured in 1000' racing due to a shorter race course.  To return to 1320' racing could expose the NHRA to serious litigation in the event of a critical injury or death.

Despite the possible legal ramifications against the NHRA, Bob Vandergriff Jr. believes making an attempt to run quarter-mile again is something the NHRA should do and its drivers should support.

“If it doesn’t work then it couldn’t be any worse than it is now,”  Vandergriff Jr. said. “It’s an attempt to make it better which I have to support. I have been a big critic of them not doing anything to help us, so if this is something they can do which they believe helps us with research which shows why we need to do it, the fans I have talked to are in favor of it. Maybe that does help the sport and if that’s the case I have to applaud them for finally doing something they think will help grow the sport back.”

John Force, the most decorated driver in nitro racing, is all for helping the sport. The 16-time champion doesn’t believe going back to quarter-mile nitro racing will fix the ills NHRA faces.

“I have no desire to go back,” Force said. “I've had catastrophic things; I've had to deal with things a lot of people don't deal with. Things the NHRA has to deal with like insurance companies. We went back to a thousand for safety. One thing that no one can argue is that if we went back to the 1320 and something happened the people would say, ‘why did you go back?”

“Would it have put a few more people in the stands? It might, I don't know. I think the economy's got us and that's where we're at. And there is cost savings too but that's not a priority to me, it's safety. I spent a lot of money to improve safety, it's money that I will never get back. It was never about money it was about safety and that's why.”

While the NHRA understands both sides of the argument when it comes to a responsible decision to return 1320' racing for the Top Fuel and Funny Car divisions there may be only one true argument – money, and their loss of revenue.

If the results of the survey reveal the loss of spectator attendance at NHRA events has to do with the length of the race, a reduction from 1320' to 1000', there may be no choice but to make a return to 1320' racing for the Top Fuel and Funny Car drivers and teams.

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