Two-time Funny Car champion Matt Hagan shared his opinion about the NHRA’s new track-preparation formula that started three races ago, at Houston, and its effects this past week.
He said it, and he’s done talking about it.
“I said what I had to say. I just thought it needed to be addressed,” the driver of the Mopar Express Lane Dodge Charger said Friday afternoon.
Hagan spoke his mind immediately following Sunday’s NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at Charlotte’s zMAX Dragway.
“Obviously, NHRA needs to address the track-prep situation. There’s a lot less grip out there, and that’s why everyone’s smoking the tires and blowing up,” said. “Hopefully, they can get this situation figured out.”
But by Wednesday, Hagan still was perturbed. That’s when he wrote in a Twitter post, “I’ll say it cause no one else will say it. @NHRA should be embarrassed for the show that we put on in charlotte. I’m very sorry to all our fans that paid to see that. @NHRA has changed track prep up to slow the cars down and end result is tire smoke, explosions and a poor show!!”
Hagan wasn’t the only racer who grumbled about the NHRA’s new track-prep results, nor was he the only one whose car blew up last Sunday during eliminations. More than halfway down the 1,000-foot course, running in a four-wide setting, his tires lost traction. He pedaled the car, and the engine exploded with a fiery boom, shredding off half the body and flinging shrapnel in every direction.
Naturally, the NHRA’s decision to change its nitro-class track preparation seemed logical to some, distasteful to others, and a moot point to those who shrugged and simply figured they would need to learn to adapt.
What the NHRA did was change the compound-to-alcohol ratio, from 75 percent compound and 25 percent alcohol to 65 percent compound and 35 percent alcohol.
JR Todd, who came close to earning his third consecutive Funny Car victory at Charlotte, alluded to the problem in his post-race interview.
“We had a DHL Camry capable of winning the whole race. We just didn’t do the best job of negotiating the track conditions. We ran well in the first round, but still had to back it way down from what we were set up to run. We were dealing with marginal track conditions in the second round, and we clearly didn’t back it down enough like the two winners in our quad. We went out there and spun the tires. It’s frustrating, because we know this facility is good,” Todd said. “Looking back on it, we probably would have done some things different. It’s just a product of what we’re dealing with in track prep now. We’ve got to figure out how to race on it.”
Jack Beckman, the 2012 Funny Car champion, acknowledged the problem last Sunday: "With the new style of track prep, the last two races have been very difficult for the nitro crew chiefs to adjust to, and it’s made it pretty interesting as a driver.”
The Infinite Hero Dodge Charger driver elaborated Friday before qualifying began for the Southern Nationals.
He said, “I appreciate and respect that [Hagan] did that.” Then he tried to analyze the situation from both sides.
“Listen, this is not somebody rolling the dice and deciding what to do. There was a lot of due consideration going into this. I know a lot of the team owners would like them to cut down on track prep simply because then we won’t be able to accelerate the cars as hard, and it won’t be as hard on parts. That makes sense. I know that for Goodyear, there’s a concern over the escalating speeds of the cars and unless you want to do a major rules change, track prep is a potential thing that could slow the cars down. We have to balance that with putting on a great show,” Beckman said.
“Chicago Friday night, a track with a ton of grip, cutting down to 65 percent would probably be the exact thing to do. Now, maybe a Funny Car can’t run the national record, but it can still run a 3.82. Norwalk, 142 degrees, you probably want to prep that to its optimal level of traction. Nobody’s going to tear a tire apart, nobody’s going to run 340 miles an hour there. We just want to put on a good show for the fans,” he said. “So it’s finding that happy medium there, and I think that we realize that Charlotte was probably a step too far.”
Beckman asked, “There’s a couple of things that you can do, but how much is that going to cost each team? How much is that going to cost Tim Wilkerson? How much is that going to cost Terry Haddock? You know, we can’t lose these independent teams out there. So any rules change is going to always have unintended consequences. And if it’s a change to the teams, it’s going to have a cost tied to it, as well. So I just think it’s not an easy call to make, balancing between a great show for the fans and keeping these things within the parameters that the other manufacturers don’t get too concerned about.”
Top Fuel ace Antron Brown put a positive spin to it ultimately, but his explanation for his own engine concussion at Charlotte seemed to back up Hagan’s accusations.
“We were out there pushing.” Brown said. “We expected the track conditions to be good as the track was cooler. We figured a .72 [3.72-second elapsed time] would be good enough to get the job done. To our surprise, we didn’t even make it to the 330-foot mark when we started to smoke the tires. I did a quick pedal, and the track didn’t have the traction we expected. I immediately let off. The tires kept spinning. It backfired and blew up.
“It was just one of those deals that you have to get used to the way the track is prepped now. We know the track prep is less, and now we know the track is not as good as it used to be. Everybody knows it. Now everybody has to get prepared for it,” Brown said. “You could see all these other teams having the same problems. The number one, two and three qualifiers were gone (after Round 1). The toughest part is we’re pushing hard and wanting to run well. We’ll just suck it up and try to get better with it. This racing is a challenge and if it was easy, then everybody would be doing it. We all have to adapt to it. We just need to keep pushing forward.”
