PRO STOCK ROUNDTABLE
“Some of your big teams, like obviously myself
and some of the big-time guys, we had to buckle
keep saying the competition is catching up with
down and do nothing but that changeover for
them and maybe they’re right, but again, as of
three or four months straight just to get it done
this writing, no one has put a halt to the Sunday
in order to show up at Pomona. We knew the
celebrations just yet.
part-time guys who had to work a weekly job
Despite the wins, the early berths into the
and could only work in the evenings on their race
Countdown, and what most pundits are nearly
project would take somewhere in the middle of
the season to get their
stuff together.”
VIEW FROM THE TOP
Another racer agreeFour-time NHRA Pro Stock
ing the economy plays
world champion Greg Anderson,
despite a string of challenging
a large part in the fall
seasons, has returned to elite
of entries in the field,
form in 2016 on the heels of
Anderson also believes
NHRA’s mandating electronic fuel
the move to fuel injecinjection in Pro Stock competition stifles the creativition. Well-tested and prepared,
Anderson and teammate Jason
ty that drew racers and
Line have won all but one of the
tuners to Pro Stock in
14 events contested this season.
the first place.
“Our only complaint
with doing that was
we didn’t necessarily
want it to be a small
box where everybody
had to use the same
exact parts,” he says.
“People like Pro Stock
because you can kinda
stretch your legs, you
can try all different
things, you can create
all different things. We
don’t have a lot of tight
rules and a small box
to work in. All these
changes they made
guaranteeing to be another title, the two KB
with the rules made that box smaller and made
Racing stars weren’t fans of the fuel injection
it basically less attractive to people who want to
announcement. Not necessarily because of the
work on stuff and want to be creative.”
technology itself, but because it gave them very
little time to prepare.
WARREN JOHNSON
“There just wasn’t enough time to get the job
6 NHRA Pro Stock titles
done,” Anderson says. “The goal was to even
97 Nationals wins
things up in the class and try to get some of the
138 Pro Stock top qualifiers
Member of the International Motorsports
part-time guys or weekend warriors, whatever
you want to call them, to come back and race Pro
Hall of Fame and the Motorsports
Stock and try to increase car count. Our fear was
Hall of Fame of America
with all the changes that had to be made, that
arren Johnson speaks slowly,
costs a lot of money, number one, and it takes a
deliberately. “The Professor” measures
lot of time, number two.
his words carefully. He and men like
W
Bob Glidden molded the class into what it is today,
so his comments about the state of Pro Stock
carry some extra weight.
“I always had a little different approach to it,”
he says. “I raced to make a living instead of racing to spend somebody else’s money. What has
happened, unfortunately, is the fact the price of
poker has gone up so high, nobody can afford it.
For the risk/reward ratio, there’s no reward for
the amount of finances that you have to put into
it. Consequently, a number of competitors have
just dropped out.”
Educated solidly within the old school, it was
surprising to hear Johnson say he supported
the move to EFI. It’s not surprising, however, to
hear the reason why he thinks it’s a bad idea in
today’s NHRA.
“You don’t wait until you only have a select few
competitors left and then make a rules change
that only they can financially absorb and the other
people who are just out there for their entertainment, it’s their hunting/fishing/gardening/
bowling all rolled up into something with four
wheels and they can walk away from it if it gets
too expensive,” he says.
“If it had been introduced when there was a
strong car count, there would have been enough
people involved, the educational curve would
have accelerated based on the large number of
teams instead of just having one team that can
afford to spend, I don’t know, I would say probably $10 million being able to dominate.”
Johnson gets a little riled when he talks about
car counts and despite the fear of dating himself,
remembers the days at Indy that saw 50-plus
Pro Stockers qualifying for the 16-car field. The
economy also plays a big part in whether or not
teams make the trip to an NHRA Nationals race
and that’s not something he thinks the sanction
can necessarily fix.
“The price of poker has just gotten up extremely
high,” he repeats. “There’s a lot of other factors
involved as to whether NHRA is an entity that
supposedly has the future of drag racing in their
sights. I would have to say just listening to some
of the rhetoric from (NHRA President) Peter Clifford, I would say he has a more vested interest
in having the NHRA ship righted than anybody
I’ve seen previously.”
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Issue 111
PHOTO: MARK J. REBILAS
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