Jim Trace has a good problem to have. The Director of Broadcasting/Video Communication for the NHRA has an abundance of class drag racing videos that he’d love to market to the nostalgia starved drag racing fans but doesn’t know where to begin.

Trace has at his and the NHRA’s disposal, a plethora of video footage acquired when the sanctioning body reacquired the Diamond P drag racing footage.

“We’ve got plans for the old stuff and possibly re-releasing some of the older videos,” said Trace. “That’s the plan for now.”

The NHRA took delivery of the classic footage three years ago. A lot of this footage is stored on obsolete formats.

“Some of it has to be restored,” Trace said. “We are going through the whole organizational process with it. When we got it, it was a little bit of everything everywhere. We had to undergo a large organization of everything.”

 

Classic footage coming to a DVD near you?

Jim Trace has a good problem to have. The Director of Broadcasting/Video Communication for the NHRA has an abundance of class drag racing videos that he’d love to market to the nostalgia starved drag racing fans but doesn’t know where to begin.

Trace has at his and the NHRA’s disposal, a plethora of video footage acquired when the sanctioning body reacquired the Diamond P drag racing footage.

“We’ve got plans for the old stuff and possibly re-releasing some of the older videos,” said Trace. “That’s the plan for now.”

The NHRA took delivery of the classic footage three years ago. A lot of this footage is stored on obsolete formats.

“Some of it has to be restored,” Trace said. “We are going through the whole organizational process with it. When we got it, it was a little bit of everything everywhere. We had to undergo a large organization of everything.”

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We’re looking at what to do with it. We’ve built a plan to build up the home video opportunities for the fans. It’s a matter of finding out what they want and how to package it for them. Some of the older stuff we can’t get to now. Some of this material needs to be upgraded to a different format. It’s not like we can go right in and edit with it. Some of the stuff is so old that we only have one opportunity to copy this stuff to another format. - NHRA Director Broadcasting/Video Communication Jim Trace

Video afficianados beware; fresh vintage footage might not be released in the near future. According to Trace, the library consisted of 26,000 – 27,000 different tapes.

“They were organized by network and other criteria,” Trace said. “We have had to reorganize the entire library by year and event. That has taken us a while.”

Trace admits seeing the classic footage of the drag racing legends is a rush.

“It’s pretty cool to know all of that stuff is here,” Trace said. “We go through the stuff and find ourselves saying, ‘Wow, forgot that was still around. Didn’t know that existed.”

“There’s some tapes we haven’t even looked at. We have some footage that Wally gave Diamond P that we don’t even know what is on there.”

Trace will tell you every visit to the video vault provides an enlightening experience.

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“It’s a rush, sometimes,” Trace admits. “We’ve gotten over the overwhelming experience in looking at all of the tapes, in bulk, and saying, ‘Holy Crap, what are we going to do with all of this stuff. There’s all kinds of formats.”

Trace said these formats range from film to the 2-inch tapes. He added there are about five different formats.

“We’re looking at what to do with it,” Trace said. “We’ve built a plan to build up the home video opportunities for the fans. It’s a matter of finding out what they want and how to package it for them.

“Some of the older stuff we can’t get to now. Some of this material needs to be upgraded to a different format. It’s not like we can go right in and edit with it. Some of the stuff is so old that we only have one opportunity to copy this stuff to another format.

“Again, I have to emphasize that we want to know what the fans want,” Trace continued. “We want to know what the market is for. We got many ideas up in the air – just have to find a place to start.”

A good place to begin could be in the NHRA’s regular rotation on the Classic ESPN rotation. The classic races dates back to the 1996 season.

“We’ve talked to ESPN about getting them some additional stuff,” Trace said. “We are looking back to the old ABC Wide World of Sports stuff. That stuff is obviously on a bunch of different networks. ESPN has been taking complete races and putting them into the rotation. Some of that stuff will have to be restored before we could give it to them.

“We’ve talked about taking some of the classic footage and re-editing into new shows but that would be a costly undertaking. There is a lot more to this than putting in a VHS tape and dubbing it.”

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