NASCAR calls their title run The Chase. The PGA has the Fed Ex Cup
Playoffs. The NCAA, might very well have the best descriptive name, calling
their playoff series March Madness.

In its very first season of use, the NHRA's POWERade Drag Racing
Series' Countdown to the Championship has been something closer to August
Anxiety.

At least that's the way it felt for Top Fuel veteran Doug Herbert, whose drive
to a spot in the NHRA's Countdown to the Championship wasn't exactly a walk in
the park. In fact, it was quite gut-wrenching for Herbert, who earned his spot
in the Countdown to Four by scoring an unbelievable victory at the Toyo Tires
NHRA Finals in Reading, Pa. last week.

It wasn't enough that Herbert, in all likelihood, had to win the
race to earn a position in the top eight, but he had to do it while enduring
four days of eliminations, thanks in part to consistent rain.

John
Force firmly believes that you don’t have to see something to believe
it. 

Guided by what he can only describe as divine intervention, Force
will announce his latest project, The Eric Medlen Foundation, at the US
Nationals in Indianapolis.
The sole purpose of the Foundation is to further the development of safety in
drag racing. 

Force gave Torco’s
CompetitionPlus.com an early look at his plans, just days before the debut of
an Eric Medlen tribute car, one which he’ll drive. It is the culmination of a
project that he’s personally commandeered since March.

“Immediately after the Gainesville tragedy, we
started looking towards the future,” Force said.

The first place Force
looked was at blueprints for an existing 65,000 square foot building that he
had earmarked for rental income once he retired. This was before Medlen’s
tragic passing.

A lot of things changed in
Forces’ life after Medlen’s passing.

All of a sudden,
retirement planning seemed like such an empty future to the 14-time champion.

Force said his wife Laurie
intervened with a humble and thought-provoking suggestion.

“You know, John,” Laurie
said to him about the project. “It isn’t to have money in the bank and have
security in the bank when you know our children are out there racing. Not just
our kids, but all of these other kids, are out here in racing.”

Ever been to a drag race when the public address system has broken
down? Even though you can see the cars going down the track and see the
numbers on the scoreboards, without someone to fill you in on the
little, sometimes overlooked details, the race seems somehow incomplete.

If memory serves us on this one, it was the National Football League,
in conjunction with one of the television networks, that decided to
broadcast a complete game a few years ago without using an announcing
team. With additional field-side microphones and others placed
throughout the stadium to enhance the natural sound, those involved
were eager to see what the audience reaction might be. Maybe their plan
was to use a positive reaction as a method of holding down announcer
and color commentator salaries, but whatever the initial plan, the
overwhelmingly negative reaction from the viewers, advertisers and
media was such that the experiment was never repeated.

Just as drag racing’s history is full of stories of colorful drivers,
teams and cars, that history reads like a 14th Century religious tome
without some color added. Even though we can’t “hear” the old
announcers in a magazine’s history story, we know that the men and
women who called those early races helped make them “work.”

Styles have thankfully changed over the years, and for those of who you
get all of your drag racing exposure on the NHRA POWERade Series trail,
you’re fortunate enough to be exposed to most experienced microphone
jockeys the sport has to offer. When you’re listening to the commentary
of the likes of Bob Frey, Alan Reinhart, Lewis Bloom and one or two
others, you’re listening to the best, period.
 

Love him or hate him, you
know one thing about Warren Johnson – if asked he’s going to tell you his
opinion on a subject. He won’t mince words. He won’t be politically correct.
But that’s what’s made him what he is today in the sport.

WJ is a no-nonsense drag
racer who plays to win in everything he does. He’s controversial at times and
that comes from an undying love of the sport and a never-ending need for
competition.

WJ has been around the
block a time or two (or maybe three). He’s seen Pro Stock evolve from the
humble pounds-per-cubic inch factorization to today’s complex 500-inch format.
He’s raced the mountain motors (even though he’ll tell you it ought to be
called mountain engines) and even driven cars he’s deemed unsafe at any speed.

WJ loves the nuts and
bolts of engines. He meticulously dissects every part of a car on a regular
basis.

However, sometimes he
dissects the various parts of drag racing. That’s what he’s done with this
version of The World According to.

Read along and see what
racing would be like if “The Professor” was in charge.

Sometimes you need to buck
the system in order to get things right. That’s what Tommy Johnson Jr. and the
Skoal Funny Car team did to right their errant ship. If you ask Johnson, they
had no other choice. They needed to make wholesale changes to his car if they
hoped to have a chance at the Countdown to the Championship, so they did.

“I think it has been a
struggle for not only our team but all of the other teams out here,” Johnson
said. “Just look at all of the DNQs this season and you can see it’s not an
isolated incident. We’ve won a race and that has been a high point, but
otherwise we’ve struggled with the tune-up.”

That’s why Johnson and
company took a look at the Skytel Dragster driven by teammate Larry Dixon and
made major changes to their combination.

“We had to do something
with three races left before the cut,” Johnson said. “We took the engine
combination in Larry Dixon’s dragster and converted it to our Funny Car. The
only difference between our car and his is the clutch.”

Johnson showed signs of
improvement when he qualified in the No. 3 position at Sonoma and reached the
quarterfinals on race day.

Ron Capps is in the
playoffs and for him the timing couldn’t be better. Please understand that the
summer time is the right time when it comes to Capps and drag racing.

That was a large factor in
Capps’ clinching his Countdown to the Championship berth quicker than any other
Funny Car driver. Capps got his points out of the way early. If he loses a
first round or doesn’t run up to snuff between now and the U.S Nationals at
Indianapolis there’s no cause for concern. He’s likely testing new parts. It’s
Indianapolis and beyond that you have to watch out for.

“This is probably my most
comfortable time when it comes to racing,” Capps said of racing in the summer.
“I’ve always done well during this time, dating back to my days with the Skoal
team. When you stand back and look at it, the one thing we lacked last year
from this time were qualifying points. When you get to Indy the slate is wiped
clean. It’s 10 points but you know ho quickly that can be made up.

“Before the season I was
talking to (crew chief Ed McCulloch) and we lost a pretty good amount of points
in qualifying to guys like [Robert] Hight. With the exception of a few races,
we have qualified in the top three or four. He’s worked on that tremendously.
The qualifying points can mean the difference between a driver being fourth or
fifth or even getting in.

It may be under intense fire from irate sportsman racers, but the
concept of ANDRA’s DRDF is not all that bad and if its benefits were
more evident could easily be sold to members.

Australian drag racers have long complained about the lack of media
coverage their sport has received outside its own industry publications
in comparison to their road racing cousins. Perception is often seen as
reality and through a lack of self-promotion drag racers are seen as
the poorer, lower class cousins in motorsport.

In a “user pays” world, the roundy-round racers have never been
hesitant in coming forward, and usually pay for professional marketing
and media services and clearly reap the benefits of doing that.

A groundswell of racer support towards a revolution of “professional”
Australian drag racing is currently underway, but before it can realise
its potential a crisis threatens the entire sport Down Under.

In May, businessman Shane Gore launched his idea for Australian drag
racing to take the next step in its development under the Straight Line
Events (SLE) banner.

Unlike the NHRA’s recently announced potential sale of its so-called
“pro racing assets” to HD Partners, in which the teams have no equity
as such, SLE is looking to acquire either by sale or lease category
management rights from ANDRA to its professional Group 1 categories –
Top Fuel, Top Alcohol, Top Doorslammer, Pro Stock, Top Bike and Pro
Stock Bike – and its proposal calls for teams to purchase licenses to
contest the series, with a set number available in each eliminator and
costs ranging from $12,000 (Pro Bike) to $50,000 (Top Fuel). All
monetary listings are in Australian dollars. The current exchange rate
is $1 US equals $1.1668 AU.

Who says you can't have it
all?

David Powers is perfect
proof that not only is it possible to have one's cake, but you can eat it
too...with some ice cream.

Powers is doing just that,
owning one of the top operations in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series tour.
He does it while also operating David Powers Homes, a luxury home-building company
in Houston.

How does he maintain both
businesses to the top of their respective games?

This started out to be just about the Ronnie Sox
Foundation.

But you can't have that without love. You're
familiar with the late Ronnie Sox and his achievements on the drag strip and
the charity foundation in his name, which is approaching its first
birthday.

Oh, you're not? 

You will be in just a minute. 

But first, this is a story of love, some might say
a May-September romance that narrowly missed being unrequited love. The union
of Diane and Ronnie. You read about Sox' achievements with the Sox and Martin
team on www.competitionplus.com last year.
You know, the five championships and so on... 

But what's a hard-boiled drag racing writer doing a
story that has to do with love?

Brake pads and manifolds, okay, but what will make this story go faster? A dose
of nitro, maybe a supercharger?  

No, Diane Sox, Ronnie's widow, that's the element.
And she's the force behind the Ronnie Sox Foundation, which raises funds and
donates twice a year for youngsters at St. Jude's.