ADRL Faces Uncharted Territory in their Rulebook …

Pro Modified team owner Paul Trussell admits that he didn’t get as angry as he could have been Saturday evening at the ADRL Hardees Georgia Drags in Valdosta, Ga.

Trussell’s supercharged Camaro was competing in the Pro Extreme division when driver Ed Hoover got out of shape and crossed the centerline on the burnout. Tommy D’Aprile, in the other lane, had time to get out of the throttle to prevent a collision.

Trussell said the team backed up and went through their staging procedure and nothing was said to the team by the starter or any race official until after the race. Hoover outreacted D’Aprile and beat him to the finish line with a 3.87 elapsed time.

D’Aprile had issues and shut the car off early.

This is the point where Trussell feels the ADRL “screwed him over”.

“One of their officials came up to Ed in the shutdown area and said we were disqualified for crossing the centerline and that someone would come by our trailer to explain,” Trussell said. “My question is this … if a man is disqualified before the run then why don’t you shut them off before they put wear and tear on their car -- tell them right then and there? If they had done that, I might have been a little upset over the heat of the moment, but I would have gotten over it and understood.

“When you let the man run and take a chance of tearing up something or crashing the car when he’s already disqualified, that makes me believe they are making up the rules as they go along. You can call it what you want. I call it getting screwed.”

A source close to the situation said the issue was being debated as the cars backed up from their burnouts and before a final decision could be reached the race was staged and completed.

ADRL Race Director Bubba Corzine was the race official who made the decision to disqualify Hoover.

On Tuesday, ADRL President Kenny Nowling told CompetitionPlus.com that he stands firmly behind Corzine’s decision and admits that it wasn’t an easy one to make.

“We were faced with a situation that we’d never encountered,” Nowling admitted. “I guess hindsight being 20/20, and I apologize to both Ed Hoover and Paul Trussell, is that we let them make a run. The starter should have shut them off. Unfortunately there’s never enough time to make those split-second decisions. You always want to evaluate every detail concisely. At the end of the day, I apologize only that we allowed them to make the run.”

The ADRL’s online rulebook doesn’t address this particular situation and a call to the IHRA and NHRA confirmed that a driver is not disqualified for a centerline infraction as long as it does not interfere with the other driver’s opportunity to race. The contention is that a race is not considered valid until the stage lights have been lit.

The ADRL also used the weekend to introduce additional legislation disqualifying any team whose crew members stand in front of the car while it does a burnout. The announcement was made during the drivers meeting and at least one high-profile team was disqualified from making their Friday evening run.

“Unfortunately I believe we are going to have to do a nasty thing and that is to write a full rulebook addressing all of these issues and make everything clear,” Nowling said.

Trussell says his incident won’t prevent attending other ADRL events but this situation certainly left a bad taste in his mouth.

“We were excited about being a legal IHRA car competing against the screw blower teams,” Trussell admitted. “I guess we’ll be known as the first car owner in ADRL to get disqualified for crossing the centerline on the burnout. That and a quarter might get me a cup of coffee at the store.”