Every Friday, Torco's CompetitionPlus.com brings you our Feedback letters. Read what our readers have to say about our feature articles and you can even offer your opinions.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY - December 1 

Over the course of the next two weeks, Torco's CompetitionPlus.com will feature the world champions of both the NHRA and IHRA. Senior writer Susan Wade delves into the behind-the-scenes stories that made each one of these champions the best in the their respective games during the 2006 season.

Our second installment features the NHRA Pro Stock champions - Jason Line and Andrew Hines. 

Regardless
of religious background or affiliation (or lack thereof), people
usually view the Christmas holidays as a season of peace. But I wonder
at times if peace is as common a condition as it once was in our
society. Sociologists tell us that peacefulness is something that all
mankind seeks and is willing to go to great lengths to find.
Unfortunately, it appears to me that more and more people every year
seem to be in a constant search for what I call the missing peace.

I imagine that one of the most distressing experiences a racer can
endure is to finally complete an engine rebuild—only to discover that a
few extra pieces still remain. (And, yes, I speak from personal
experience, but please don’t ask.)

Over the course of the next two weeks, Torco's CompetitionPlus.com will feature the world champions of both the NHRA and IHRA. Senior writer Susan Wade delves into the behind-the-scenes stories that made each one of these champions the best in the their respective games during the 2006 season.

Our first installment features the NHRA nitro champions - Tony Schumacher and John Force. 

Thanksgiving is time for
reflection and gratitude. No one understands that more than NHRA competitor
Jack Beckman, who is very thankful after the past few years has seen him
experience more highs and low and ups and downs than a Yo-yo toy.

But now the prognosis
looks good for the former sportsman veteran, who ended the 2006 season as the
hottest driver on the POWERade Series circuit, winning one national event with
one runner-up at the final two events. He also set Funny Car national records
for E.T. (4.662 seconds) and speed (333.66).

Yes, these days it's very
exciting to be Jack Beckman.

In
the last episode, the Northwind Top Fuel dragster, the car that shocked the
racing industry by winning the Drag News #1 spot in’65, had finally been found
in a garage in Vancouver, British Columbia. It had been stored there
for nearly thirty years. It was at that point in the story that the hard work
really began, as Jack Coonrod had to sort through and find all the missing
pieces of the car and create a schedule to complete the restoration.

In
early 2006 Jack brought the car back to the U.S. and moved it into his
Vancouver, Washington, shop. The car hardly resembled
the beautiful hot rod it had been in the mid-sixties when it was a full-bodied
fueler with gold-flake paint. The over-the-roll-bar body was pretty rare back
in those days, making the car resemble a streamliner from the Bonneville
Salt Flats. It had been a beautiful racing machine then but the
thirty years of storage had been hard on the Northwind. 

These are not listed in
chronological or order of importance, but each is significant in its own way.

Drag racing is a hard sell to much of the so-called “straight press,”
and it’s with considerable irony that we point out the reason for some
of the sport’s difficulties in this area rest with – the press
itself. Forty years ago it wasn’t uncommon for a major metropolitan
daily’s second section to be headlined, “Speeding Drag Racer Loses
Control: 2 Die In Fiery Crash.” With slight alteration that same
headline could have appeared 20 years ago, 10 years ago or even last
week – and in some city, somewhere, probably did.

For decades the NHRA’s myriad public relations managers fought a losing
battle in trying to convince the press that an alcohol-fueled teenager
killed in an illegal speed contest was not, in fact, a “drag racer,”
nor was that “stoplight Grand Prix” even a drag race. It’s nothing
short of amazing how an activity as basic as drag racing can so often
be misidentified or inaccurately defined. Watch any NASCAR race and the
announcers – who should know better – consistently state “It’s a drag
race to the first corner,” when in actuality, nothing could be further
from the truth.

The greatest weekend perhaps ever in the illustrious history of drag racing was marred by a driver disobeying a direct order.

Tony "The Sarge" Schumacher’s record run in the final round against
Doug Kalitta gave him his third straight Top Fuel championship during
the Pomona finals.

John Force beat Ron Capps in the second round to clinch his 14th world
title and proved that old men can still react better than a young one.
The quicker reaction propelled him to his 122nd event title and a win
over Jack Beckman’s record-setting flash down the quarter-mile.

It was the type of season
that most NHRA competitors dream about.

Funny Car veteran Ron
Capps won a class-best five national events in eight final rounds, led the
POWERade Series standings after 17 of the circuit's 23 races and earned his
sixth top-five finish in the past 10 years. But once the tire smoke of another
season had cleared, John Force had won his 14th Funny Car title and Capps could
only think of what might have been.

"It's very
disappointing to give up what we thought was a pretty good chance to win a
championship," Capps said. "Even when we led by as much as (122
points), I kept telling the media who was saying we were going to wrap it up
early, 'You can't count out John Force.' And sure enough it came down to that.