Isn’t it funny how the simple things that seem so insignificant in our young lives can make such a huge impact as we age?

Take for instance a simple word - catalyst, I used to dislike the word, but now I thank God for it.

This dislike can be traced to the fifth grade when the difference
between an average and above average grade on a vocabulary test was the
word catalyst.

I thought it was a part on a car and answered accordingly.

Within hours of the public announcement on May 30^th
of the proposed acquisition of the NHRA’s professional racing assets by the HD
Partners Acquisition Corp. (HDP), the racing press and online message
boards/forums went into swooning, virtual hyperventilation. Banner headlines
pronounced “NHRA—Sold!” or, “NHRA Under New Ownership.” No doubt, the choice of
verbage was deliberate so as to attract attention through shock, but these
grossly incorrect opening media salvos set the tone for the misinformation
feeding frenzy that followed on the message boards: A smorgasborg of stunned
uncertainty and confusion as well as some hysterical—sometimes hysterically
funny—tirades, rants, ramblings and dire warnings of impending doom.

There are times in our lives when we do good things simply because it’s right to do them.

Turn back the clock to a time when the next season of drag racing was
just around the corner. Evan Knoll, ensconced in a gliding chair,
mulled over the various possible ways in which Melanie Troxel’s new
dragster could be used to benefit various charities. Somewhere around 3
am, it came to us, Knoll and myself, how we could both help and honor a
huge group of people who in a time long past felt more spit upon than
welcomed.

An elaborate plan of featuring various charities was replaced with a
plan to honor war veterans, especially the Vietnam veterans, because in
our minds, they’d had to stand at the back of the honor line for far too
long. We wanted to include the National League of POW-MIA Families
because unfortunately, we’ve still got over 1,700 servicemen
unaccounted and missing despite the war being over for 35 years.

Our focus decided I would place the first call to driver Melanie Troxel
informing her of the game plan. Her response sounded as if she was
confused. “Okaaaay,” she responded, adding that she would immerse
himself in project having no real connection to the Vietnam War
herself. Troxel was still a young impressionable child at the time the
conflict came to a close.

This is not an editorial in the normal sense of the
word. On the contrary it is, rather, a compendium of opinions and ideas sought
and received from a significant number of professional competitors. Some were
and remain qualifiers for this year’s championship, while others missed the cut,
a few by significant margins. All of their viewpoints count and should be heard,
but as has historically been the case with the National Hot Rod Association,
when it comes to accepting advice and guidance from outside the confines of 2035
Financial Way, they have often been unwilling to listen and positively respond
to suggestions.

For those hard core denizens of the Internet who continue
to hope for a return to their version of the good old days in which a straight
forward, earn-the-points-and-you-win-the-championship points chase is conducted,
that no longer seems feasible or even remotely likely. The NHRA has firmly and,
it would seem, permanently jumped on the playoff concept of drag racing, and
that, in and of itself, is not all bad. As virtually every competitor we’ve
spoken with has said, if the Countdown produces higher television ratings and
more fans in the seats, they give it a big thumbs up. While it may be too early
to tell regarding the TV ratings, it would appear that the Countdown has
generated additional print and electronic publicity for the sport, and there’s
nothing negative about that. If they’re talking about drag racing – good, bad or
indifferent – it’s a positive.

This past weekend was the second NHRA national event I wasn’t looking forward to attending.

The first was in April because I knew Eric Medlen wouldn’t be there.
The death of Medlen a few weeks before in a testing crash still rattles
me each time I see the John Force Racing pit area whether at a national
event or when the teams were testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two
weeks ago testing.

The anxiety was compounded when the team was here getting Robert Hight
tuned up for the Countdown and Force was still hospitalized in Dallas.
It was even worse knowing the team was wrestling with a seemingly
unreliable chassis.

There were more anxious moments each time one of Force’s four Funny
Cars went down the track this weekend in the ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA
Nationals at Las Vegas. Yes, John Force Racing fielded cars for Hight,
Ashley Force, veteran Phil Burkart in Force’s car and Mike Neff, who
competed in his first NHRA Funny Car race as a driver

I apologize to any Geezer fans out there, but I’m high-jacking his
column!  I’m his daughter, Lisa, and I just returned from spending a
day with him at the Nitro Jam World Finals in Rockingham, NC.  I have
to preface this editorial with a little background about who I am. I’m
a Business Analyst for an e-commerce and logistics company which
basically means I’m half business professional and half geek.  I can
grep XML log files for transaction data and I can use SQL to join
tables to query the database.  I’m the Project Manager for some high
profile projects in our company, but I don’t know SQUAT about drag
racing!  That was the case until this weekend.   

Dad has been after me to attend a race for 2 or 3 years now but various
things have kept me from attending.  I’ve been trying to work with him
all summer to find a day when my schedule agrees with the IHRA
schedule.  Needless to say, he was very excited when it became clear
that I was finally attending a race.  He emailed me and IMed me several
times to tell me he would have 2 tickets waiting for me at the gate. 
Then I got a phone call at work on Friday to remind me again that I had
tickets waiting for me at the gate.  I got up early Saturday morning to
meet my friend, Brian, for the four-hour drive from Greenville, SC to
Rockingham, NC.  Before we even got out of town, I started getting
phone calls from the Geez asking if I was on the road yet.  It turns
out that it was a good thing that he checked in on a regular basis
because he gave us crappy directions.  Great photographer, crappy
cartographer.  Oh yeah…it took us about 3.5 - 4 hours to get there and
not 4.5 – 5 hrs like he said it would.  I figured after all these years
hanging out with race car drivers he would have learned to make good
use of that gas pedal by now.

This column is provided for me to document my travels and
experiences while traversing the country following drag racing. I have gone to
all of the major venues for both NHRA and IHRA events in addition to some of
the more obscure places like George Ray’s Wildcat HotRod drag strip in
Paragould, Arkansas. Although it was raining during my visit to George’s place
and all I got to do was look. I plan to go back and actually see a car go down
the track.

During the majority of my travels, it has been in a Chevy
Astro van that has affectionately become known as Rodney. Of course that is
after the comic Rodney Dangerfield, who always claimed that he got no respect.
Astro vans do not come to mind very often when you are talking about drag
racing; however, Rodney had a loyal fan following within the readership of
Torco's CompetitionPlus.com and this column. Once I started documenting my travels with
Rodney, it is amazing and humorous how many people would ask me how Rodney was
doing.

I’ve been thinking about
this for some time, so I thought I’d put my musings down on paper.  Will drag racing go the way of other sports
where it’s all about money?  Can loyalty to
friends and teammates win over going with the highest bidder?  Do we still share a passion for what we do,
or has it become just a job?

When we were kids, we took
every chance to get together with our friends to play baseball, football or
basketball at the local park or street corner. 
Not because we thought we could make any money but because we could be
with our friends, doing what we loved to do. 
We played Little League or Pop Warner, not for the pizza or ice cream we
might get after the game, but because we loved what we did. We played high
school sports for the same reason and wore our lettermen’s jackets to show we
were proud of what we did and who our friends were. It was the same if you were
in a car club or a band. Now we hear of professional athletes who are already
making $10 million a year who want out of their contracts, not to be with
friends or even have a better chance of winning, but so they can make another
million dollars a year.  How much is too
much money, and where is the love of the game?

Drag racing began with the
love of cars. We enjoyed being with people with the same interests. When racing
became too expensive, and more work, we formed teams with our friends to
continue doing what we loved.  We knew
everything about our crews because they were our friends. When we went out of
town to race, we slept five in a room and ate hot dogs, but none of that
mattered because we were with our friends and got to do what we loved doing. It
was the way it had to be. Now we have teams that are so big, some owners don’t
know their crew guys names or even what their jobs are. The only thing we
require of a crew guy now is unbelievably long hours of work, leaving their
families for long periods of time, and no mistakes. If they leave or get fired,
oh well. They can be replaced.