DR AG I LL U S T R AT ED R O UN D TABLE
94 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
COOL HAND LUKE Whether he’s racing
for contingency money in the NHRA Super
classes or entering a big-money bracket race,
Luke Bogacki expects the prize potential
to come close to matching the growing
investment that sportsman racing requires.
image at tech inspection and a check ready at the
finish line. I don’t know if that’s true, but it would
be king. I think that’d bring a lot of people back
and a lot of good sponsors back if they knew it
was going to be paid up front like that. It’s much
easier from a paperwork standpoint, too, I can tell
you that. I just runnered up at a divisional and
I’m still getting these checks and you’ve gotta stay
on top of it. It’s certainly not an inconvenience,
but it’s sometimes pretty interesting trying to
track it all down.
LB: Obviously, involvement. I don’t know if
this is necessarily a common opinion, but I think
the new regime at NHRA is doing a better job.
They’re heading down the right road. We aren’t
necessarily seeing the results yet in terms of a
ton of increase in manufacturer involvement, but
they’ve made it a lot easier on manufacturers to
get involved and much more cost-effective. They
seem to be listening to the manufacturers. It’s
going to take some time, though. It would benefit
everyone involved to pay at the racetrack, and I
don’t see the downside to it, as long as you have
“If you take a look at it, NHRA contingency
postings are lower now than where IHRA was
when I started with them in 2003. Where are they
going to be 10 years from now?” Beard wonders.
Issue 110
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There’s something to be said for
racing on the same track as the
pros. The stands are full. Most
of your coworkers don’t know
anything about bracket racing,
but when your national event
comes into town and you tell
them, ‘I’m going to be racing at
Englishtown on the same track as
John Force’, a lot of your average
fans or friends, they’ll say, ‘oh, I
heard about that on the radio.
That’s great, you’re going to be
racing on the same track as John
Force, blah, blah, blah.’ There’s
something to be said for that.
On the flip side, if you’re strictly about competition and you
want to get the most amount of
runs down the track in a fourday period, you can’t beat bracket
racing because you get a separate
event each day. I think that the
competition is definitely toughest at bracket racing. At national
events, if there’s any type of bad
weather or oil downs, typically
the sportsman racers are going to
be the first ones to feel the effects.
NHRA has the time constraints with the live
TV and that sort of thing, whereas if you go to a
bracket race you are the show. You don’t have to
ever worry about getting bumped, so to speak.
In your opinion, what are some of the shortcomings of modern contingency programs?
SL: I think the idea behind what NHRA is
doing with the contingency program and what
the companies are doing is a great thing. Unless
NHRA is going to increase their payouts, they
have to continue this contingency program to
keep sportsman racing alive. All these companies
that are involved in it make it to where these racers can keep coming back, and if you’re winning
races, keep the funds coming in. Back 10 years
ago when I was racing sportsman full-time, there
was a lot of companies that were involved, so it
was very worthwhile to go out there and race a
national event with upwards of 40 or 50 stickers
that were on your car and get that money rolling
in. With the decrease in contingency support it’s
made it pretty tough. I think with a little bit of restructuring we can get these companies involved
again, and get it to where these companies aren’t
just putting money out there; they’re getting the
return back in the form of product support from
racers and also the notoriety that they deserve for
doing these contingency programs. It’s not cheap
for these companies to do it.
TJ: I think it’s getting better. I think with Peter
Clifford being at NHRA, he’s a little more proactive in listening to new ideas, so I think you’ll see
that improve. I’ve heard some rumblings of an