T-PED - MORE INPUT NEEDED
Mon, 2008-11-17 12:29
The NHRA announced intentions on Friday of working towards slowing
their nitro cars down for a safe return to quarter-mile drag racing but
until then 1,000-foot drag racing will remain.
Input towards a solution seems to be an exclusive club, a few of the lesser financed teams told CompetitionPlus.com on Saturday. They contend the NHRA has turned to crew chiefs who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make cars go fast to slow the cars down.
Defending NHRA Funny Car world champion Tony Pedregon believes the sanctioning body and PRO, by limiting their options, seriously opens the door for agendas and slows the process of reaching a viable solution.
“It’s a shame that we have to be forward and vocal,” Pedregon said; who reportedly became engaged in a debate over the issue in a recent PRO meeting. “That’s the only way to get anyone to listen. We’ve got a lot of respect for Alan Johnson and John Force’s teams -- these are the biggest teams out here.
Pedregon must interject a “but” into the scenario. The NHRA announced intentions on Friday of working towards slowing their nitro cars down for a safe return to quarter-mile drag racing but until then 1,000-foot drag racing will remain.
Input towards a solution seems to be an exclusive club, a few of the lesser financed teams told CompetitionPlus.com on Saturday. They contend the NHRA has turned to crew chiefs who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make cars go fast to slow the cars down.
Defending NHRA Funny Car world champion Tony Pedregon believes the sanctioning body and PRO, by limiting their options, seriously opens the door for agendas and slows the process of reaching a viable solution.
“It’s a shame that we have to be forward and vocal,” Pedregon said; who reportedly became engaged in a debate over the issue in a recent PRO meeting. “That’s the only way to get anyone to listen. We’ve got a lot of respect for Alan Johnson and John Force’s teams -- these are the biggest teams out here.
Pedregon must interject a “but” into the scenario.
“I think to maintain a certain degree of balance, the input of people like Jim Dunn, Bill Miller and David Powers, these are all guys who own teams and have a vested interest, need to be heard,” Pedregon continued. “We all have the same challenges.
“What we can’t allow is those teams who do have funding to do what benefits them. We’re better with PRO than without it, and Ray Alley has been receptive to some of our ideas to maintain that balance and that’s something that hasn’t always existed. They haven’t always been as interested in our input as they have that from others. It can’t be something that works well for only one team or a few.”
Tim Wilkerson agrees that agendas are going to be part of the equation. He doesn’t envy the position the NHRA holds in determining who to draw input from.
“The problem with the input from multiple people is you get multiple agendas,” Wilkerson said. “Not that that is necessarily bad but you have to feel for the NHRA because they have the dubious task of trying to keep teams, entertain fans, control costs and survive themselves. I wouldn’t want to be in their position to have to do this so I think the way they are going about it; they are being really philosophical about it. They are going to talk to Alan Johnson; I think everyone has to agree that he is if not the best then one of the best crew chiefs in the sport. Is that completely fair to the smaller teams? Probably not -- but in the scheme of things trying to figure out how to make it happen without all of the political issues in the world, I think you are better off dealing with one guy or maybe going outside to one of the older guys like Dick LaHaie or Dale Armstrong. Find somebody that is not involved like Don Garlits. It’s hard to go to [John Force tuner, Austin] Coil, it’s hard to go to Alan Johnson, i
t’s hard to come to me because deep in our minds we’re thinking costs.
“Dickie [Venables] and [Rahn] Tobler are maybe thinking something else, I don’t know. Anything I would come up with would be removing things from the car and not adding things to the car, making it harder to police and harder to adjust to. If anything, some of the other guys may come up with the very opposite of that.”
Another crew chief on a prominent fuel team, couldn’t speak outside of anonymity due to political reasons, believes the NHRA is just going through the motions of trying to slow the cars down but has no real plans of returning to quarter-mile competition.
The 1,000-foot option provides a better economic option for the teams and the sanctioning body, he added.
Pedregon has been vocal since day one of 1,000-foot racing about his dislike of anything but quarter-mile racing and feels that little is being done to bring back the tradition at this time. He’s of the mindset that listening to ideas outside of the traditional inner circle could generate more progress in that direction.
“There are a lot of good ideas on the table,” Pedregon added. “There some compression ideas, but some of these ideas could be costly to some teams who have inventory. I also see some pretty good ideas from guys like Jim Dunn and some others that would work. I haven’t seen it tested yet.
“It’s not our fault. I just think they could have moved on some of these things a little sooner. If it gets done, if our team is called on to test we will go and test. We want to look at ways to make what we have work; and slow these cars down so we can go back to quarter-mile.
“It doesn’t matter how far we race whether it is 660 or 1320 feet, we need to do something to keep these cars from blowing up and protect our drivers.”
Pedregon believes the economics of a troubled economy should have played into some of the decisions. He’s of the mindset the shortened racing surface hasn’t achieved a lot.
“We haven’t really achieved a lot because at some time these cars are going to run even faster,” Pedregon said. “My argument is that they are still blowing up. You look at the marathon cleanup session in Las Vegas and the race before that. We have to really ask ourselves if we’ve achieved what we really wanted to do by trying minimize some of the engine explosions.
“I argued that 1,000 feet really doesn’t fix anything. If it related to saving money and parts, shoot I’d love to run 300 feet. At some point they have to stop talking about all they want to do and start testing. I’ve offered to test and there hasn’t been any follow up and there have been a couple of opportunities that we could have tried something. I’d like to see the NHRA move on it a little more swiftly than they have.”
“We can’t just do one thing,” Pedregon said of making changes. “That’s why I wasn’t for 1,000 feet. That didn’t fix anything. I knew it then and we’ve proven that other than there hasn’t been a major catastrophe. Three hundred and twenty feet goes by in less than a second if you’re zinging along at a couple hundred miles per hour. I do know that.”
Input towards a solution seems to be an exclusive club, a few of the lesser financed teams told CompetitionPlus.com on Saturday. They contend the NHRA has turned to crew chiefs who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make cars go fast to slow the cars down.
Defending NHRA Funny Car world champion Tony Pedregon believes the sanctioning body and PRO, by limiting their options, seriously opens the door for agendas and slows the process of reaching a viable solution.
“It’s a shame that we have to be forward and vocal,” Pedregon said; who reportedly became engaged in a debate over the issue in a recent PRO meeting. “That’s the only way to get anyone to listen. We’ve got a lot of respect for Alan Johnson and John Force’s teams -- these are the biggest teams out here.
Pedregon must interject a “but” into the scenario. The NHRA announced intentions on Friday of working towards slowing their nitro cars down for a safe return to quarter-mile drag racing but until then 1,000-foot drag racing will remain.
Input towards a solution seems to be an exclusive club, a few of the lesser financed teams told CompetitionPlus.com on Saturday. They contend the NHRA has turned to crew chiefs who are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make cars go fast to slow the cars down.
Defending NHRA Funny Car world champion Tony Pedregon believes the sanctioning body and PRO, by limiting their options, seriously opens the door for agendas and slows the process of reaching a viable solution.
“It’s a shame that we have to be forward and vocal,” Pedregon said; who reportedly became engaged in a debate over the issue in a recent PRO meeting. “That’s the only way to get anyone to listen. We’ve got a lot of respect for Alan Johnson and John Force’s teams -- these are the biggest teams out here.
Pedregon must interject a “but” into the scenario.
“I think to maintain a certain degree of balance, the input of people like Jim Dunn, Bill Miller and David Powers, these are all guys who own teams and have a vested interest, need to be heard,” Pedregon continued. “We all have the same challenges.
“What we can’t allow is those teams who do have funding to do what benefits them. We’re better with PRO than without it, and Ray Alley has been receptive to some of our ideas to maintain that balance and that’s something that hasn’t always existed. They haven’t always been as interested in our input as they have that from others. It can’t be something that works well for only one team or a few.”
Tim Wilkerson agrees that agendas are going to be part of the equation. He doesn’t envy the position the NHRA holds in determining who to draw input from.
“The problem with the input from multiple people is you get multiple agendas,” Wilkerson said. “Not that that is necessarily bad but you have to feel for the NHRA because they have the dubious task of trying to keep teams, entertain fans, control costs and survive themselves. I wouldn’t want to be in their position to have to do this so I think the way they are going about it; they are being really philosophical about it. They are going to talk to Alan Johnson; I think everyone has to agree that he is if not the best then one of the best crew chiefs in the sport. Is that completely fair to the smaller teams? Probably not -- but in the scheme of things trying to figure out how to make it happen without all of the political issues in the world, I think you are better off dealing with one guy or maybe going outside to one of the older guys like Dick LaHaie or Dale Armstrong. Find somebody that is not involved like Don Garlits. It’s hard to go to [John Force tuner, Austin] Coil, it’s hard to go to Alan Johnson, i
t’s hard to come to me because deep in our minds we’re thinking costs.
“Dickie [Venables] and [Rahn] Tobler are maybe thinking something else, I don’t know. Anything I would come up with would be removing things from the car and not adding things to the car, making it harder to police and harder to adjust to. If anything, some of the other guys may come up with the very opposite of that.”
Another crew chief on a prominent fuel team, couldn’t speak outside of anonymity due to political reasons, believes the NHRA is just going through the motions of trying to slow the cars down but has no real plans of returning to quarter-mile competition.
The 1,000-foot option provides a better economic option for the teams and the sanctioning body, he added.
Pedregon has been vocal since day one of 1,000-foot racing about his dislike of anything but quarter-mile racing and feels that little is being done to bring back the tradition at this time. He’s of the mindset that listening to ideas outside of the traditional inner circle could generate more progress in that direction.
“There are a lot of good ideas on the table,” Pedregon added. “There some compression ideas, but some of these ideas could be costly to some teams who have inventory. I also see some pretty good ideas from guys like Jim Dunn and some others that would work. I haven’t seen it tested yet.
“It’s not our fault. I just think they could have moved on some of these things a little sooner. If it gets done, if our team is called on to test we will go and test. We want to look at ways to make what we have work; and slow these cars down so we can go back to quarter-mile.
“It doesn’t matter how far we race whether it is 660 or 1320 feet, we need to do something to keep these cars from blowing up and protect our drivers.”
Pedregon believes the economics of a troubled economy should have played into some of the decisions. He’s of the mindset the shortened racing surface hasn’t achieved a lot.
“We haven’t really achieved a lot because at some time these cars are going to run even faster,” Pedregon said. “My argument is that they are still blowing up. You look at the marathon cleanup session in Las Vegas and the race before that. We have to really ask ourselves if we’ve achieved what we really wanted to do by trying minimize some of the engine explosions.
“I argued that 1,000 feet really doesn’t fix anything. If it related to saving money and parts, shoot I’d love to run 300 feet. At some point they have to stop talking about all they want to do and start testing. I’ve offered to test and there hasn’t been any follow up and there have been a couple of opportunities that we could have tried something. I’d like to see the NHRA move on it a little more swiftly than they have.”
“We can’t just do one thing,” Pedregon said of making changes. “That’s why I wasn’t for 1,000 feet. That didn’t fix anything. I knew it then and we’ve proven that other than there hasn’t been a major catastrophe. Three hundred and twenty feet goes by in less than a second if you’re zinging along at a couple hundred miles per hour. I do know that.”
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