Change is taking place in the NHRA Pro Stock class because the decline of participation in the class.

The changes were announced at a meeting July 25 during the Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colo.

The changes will be mandated in two waves. Three changes will take effect at the NHRA Sonoma Nationals, July 31-Aug. 2 while several others will not take effect until the 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season.
Drivers now know they must adhere to NHRA’s changes or leave the class. Whether this improves the health of the class is unknown, but a handful of drivers believe increasing the winner’s purse at national events also would give Pro Stock a much-needed jolt.

“If you make $750 a week and you’re spending $1,000 how long are you going to survive?” said Larry Morgan, whose been racing in NHRA’S Pro Stock class since 1987. “That’s the problem. If they can’t understand that they have a screw loose. That’s what’s wrong with our class. We don’t get enough money to do like we need to do.”

Allen Johnson, the 2012 NHRA Pro Stock world champion, concurred with Morgan.

“That’s their (NHRA’s) fault there’s not enough competitors because they don’t pay enough,” Johnson said. “The cost escalates in every motorsport until you do something like this, decrease RPMs and motors last longer, that will decrease costs, but also decreases the class as far as the mph, now all that’s going down. I don’t think they did the things that really will increase fan appeal. They didn’t go far enough. They need corporate bodies, they need an engine that reduces costs so you can bring in a lot more competitors. I don’t feel like the changes they made will do anything. That’s the way it is in NHRA, they tell you what to do and you either do it or you quit.”

The Pro Stock changes left fellow driver Vincent Nobile scratching his head.

“I don’t know about the future of Pro Stock, I don’t know if it is going to be better or worse,” said Nobile, who drives the Mountain View Tire Chevy Camaro. “I just think they should leave the class alone and leave it the way it is. If the purse were larger people would come out here and try a little harder, and more people at that. The money isn’t out here, apparently to do it. Even the fuel cars don’t get paid enough money. In perspective to any other automobile sport at a professional ranking, their purses are far more than ours. You look at team like ours, we need to literally win the race to break even for a weekend. A NASCAR team wins a race and they are in the green, whether it be a lot or a little, they still are in the green. In my opinion, everything they are doing, I think it’s going to cost more money as least for the first few years, if it even lasts that long.

“All these teams that build engines now need to change what they have done, and now they have put all this research and development into fuel injection and whatnot. It certainly, in my opinion, is not going save any money. It’s only going to make things worse. The whole idea was to bring people into the sport and now these low budget teams who have two sets of carburetors, what do they do with them now? Throw them away? Now they need to buy fuel injection and that’s not going to be cheap.”

Morgan said the issue of providing more prize money for Pro Stock drivers wasn’t brought up at the July 25 meeting.

“There was absolutely no mention (of money),” Morgan said. “The prize money is what drives us. I don’t know how we all survive, but we do. It’s crazy what we race for and what we spend to do it, that I can tell you. For them, being the business, I don’t know what they could do. They are a different deal than we are all.”

NHRA and FOX Sports officials announced July 14 that starting in 2016 the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series will be televised by FOX Sports 1 (FS1) with four events airing on the FOX national broadcast network during each season of the long-term agreement, providing the world's fastest motorsport with live coverage of a majority of its events.

According to Morgan, the new TV deal was brought up by NHRA officials during the meeting July 25.

“They did mention the TV deal and how good that was going to make it for all of us,” Morgan said. “They also said they are going to do a whole lot to help it. If they do the program like they say they are going to produce it in-house, and they are going to get us a whole lot more exposure, and that’s what we need, and you can’t get exposure if you’re hiding everything you’re doing. That’s going to be the big thing.”