The response to my column published in July, The NHRA Must Trim Cost Of Pro Class Racing: Here’s How It Starts, was both overwhelming and inspiring. Our Facebook page and my inbox were flooded with messages — many of them in support, many who opposed, a few who wanted my head for proposing eliminating their local national event from the NHRA schedule, and others who just wanted to bicker about Pro Stock or throttle-stop racing. People were fired up for a variety of reasons, and they should be, because the future of drag racing is important to anyone reading this right now.

The thoughts and ideas proposed in that column were expressly for the purpose of creating a better tomorrow for drag racing at its highest level — ideas than can trickle down to make the sport as a whole more prosperous, more affordable, and still entertaining, even if the cars stop getting — or being allowed to go — faster. Drag racing is, in some ways, going to have to reinvent itself because, again, it’s nearing a place that it’s not been before. And, it’s handing itself off and entrusting a new generation to shepherd it.



In 1974, an anthropologist and author, Ernest Becker, wrote a book entitled The Denial of Death. In it, he explained that on an unconscious but semi-conscious level, we’re all aware that we’re going to die, and that this inevitably scares us all. And so we compensate by constructing a conceptual self that will live on forever. This, he explains, is why people put their names on buildings and statues, have created cities and government, and why people have families and work to build a foundation for generations of offspring to come. We put names on grandstands, cars in museums, plaques in halls of fame, but don’t take steps to make sure it all lives on forever.





Folks who helped build this sport from its earlier years— the aforementioned Karamesines, Don Garlits, Steve Gibbs, Jim Dunn, and so on — this generation is sadly dwindling, but they are still with us. In the grand context of human history, the 70 or so years that organized drag racing has been around is but a blink of an eye. Even in the context of industrial society, the time drag racing has existed is short. And drag racing has changed so much in that brief span of time; imagine how it could be in another seven decades. If there were flocks of Top Fuel dragsters 50 years ago and 15 on a good weekend now, how can we expect that negative trend to change if we don’t step in and do something? If your local track is suffering, what’s going to change if it doesn’t seek change? Albert Einstein had a unique definition of insanity that applies here; look it up.



Firstly, we need to thank our lucky stars we live at a time in human history when automobiles and drag racing (and all of the modern conveniences of life) exist; can you imagine having lived in a cave without coffee makers, LTE wireless data, or tacos?



Then, we need to ask ourselves: what are we — me, you, the board of the NHRA and its team owners, the leadership of the NMCA and PDRA, Donald Long and John Sears, Bill Bader and Kyle Seipel and Peter Biondo, and even individual racers — doing to preserve the sport of drag racing both for the younger fans and racers among us, and the generations to come? Are we going to focus solely on today, make the money while it’s hot, complain about rules until no one is left, let costs spiral out of control for our own selfish pleasures, squeeze the pulp dry and leave nothing for later? Or are we making decisions that entice participation and interest in acceleration contests and ensuring that drag racing outlives us? Are we leaving the place better off than we found it, even if the decisions we have to make don’t seem so great in the here and now?