DRAG ILLUSTRATED ROUNDTABLE
PHOTO: NHRA / NATIONAL DRAGSTER
RED & YELLO Shawn Langdon spends most of his weekends driving the Red Fuel Top Fuel dragster for Don Schumacher Racing, but the two-time Super Comp world champion still finds time to compete on the Sportsman level as a driver and car owner.
follow his format. When Anthony Walton and I started with our races, we wanted people to copy what we were doing because obviously the races we put together were the kind of races we wanted to go to. I love having things like Powers’ Money Tree races and the World Footbrake Challenge and the No Box Nationals and Southern Footbrake Challenges. I’ m not even running NHRA Super Stock at all this year and I’ m probably only going to one or two IHRA Super Stock races. I’ m going big-money bracket racing this year. It’ s a much better value.
Kyle Seipel: That’ s a great question and I don’ t know how to answer. I know for a fact that there are definitely a lot more big-money bracket races coast-to-coast than there ever has been. Are there too many? I wouldn’ t say yes or no. From a racer standpoint, it really gives them a lot of options – not so much on the West Coast – but the East Coast for sure. Every racer has a different strategy. A lot of racers like to stay close to home. They like to have a points series. They like to race 15 to 20 times a year and all they want to do is focus on that points series. I’ ve done that and there’ s something to be said for that. You can still be home and go to your kids’ games; you’ re not going to miss a lot of things. On the flip side, let’ s say you chase the NHRA championship points. Well, you’ ll have to go to a minimum of 14 races to have a chance to win a championship. You can almost guarantee a majority of those 14 races will be one- or two-day trips, so you’ re going to be gone away from home a lot. Then the middle ground is you have the big dollar bracket races. I think what we find is that most of our clientele are racers that are on the upper echelon at their local
“ I know for a fact that there are definitely a lot more big-money bracket races coast-tocoast than there ever has been. Are there too many? I wouldn’ t say yes or no,” Seipel says. track. They pretty much have done everything they can as far as winning and track championships. You could race against the best bracket racers in the country at our two races. I think a lot of racers want to see how they stack up against the best racers.
The way I look at our business is that we have a very good restaurant and a lot of racers like coming to our restaurant because they feel that the quality of food is great. The location of our restaurant is in a very nice spot. It’ s kind of along the lines of you only want to go out for a really nice dinner once or twice a year, but when you decide to go there you have a great time. We kind of build our races around that to where we have more racer appreciation giveaways than any of our competitors. We try to pamper our racers the best we can. From a racer’ s standpoint, the more competition there is the better the races are going to be. It’ s also going to weed a lot of them out; it’ s just like anything else – it will be hard for a lot of them to survive. For racers, I’ d say there are never enough races, but from the promoter perspective, from my point of view, every race that pops up costs us 10-15 customers.
Bob Brockmeyer and Compulink unveiled the TruSTART system at the Spring Fling Vegas race earlier this year. In the case of a double red light, the new software disqualifies the driver with the worst red light rather than the driver with the first red light. When do you expect that to be utilized at other tracks and events in the future?
KS: Basically, Brockmeyer built us the software. The bottom line is it’ s going to be available to the public probably by the end of the year. He has a waiting list for about 30 tracks right now. I think you’ re going to see a lot of tracks have it by the first of the year and then as far as sanctioning bodies, that’ s a great question. Quite honestly, I think with the response we’ ve gotten so far, I would have to say I would see NHRA utilizing it probably within the next year to year and a half. That’ s pretty much a guess. We haven’ t talked to NHRA and they haven’ t talked to Brockmeyer, but they’ re a smart group of businesspeople – they want to try to do what’ s best for their customers.
TJ: I’ d say next year. By spring of next year I think you’ ll see it at about 40- to 50-percent more tracks than it was just because some people don’ t understand it or know how it works or are confused by it. If you look at it from a
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