Drag Illustrated Issue 142, March 2019 | Page 8

here’s some- thing about South- ern California in the winter. It might not be as special for everyone as it is for those of us here in the Midwest that equate the time between November and March with freezing tempera- tures, howling wind and inches upon inches of snow, but I can’t help but be enamored with clear blue skies, blazing sun and 70-degree weather hardly two weeks into February. It wasn’t just the weather that drew me out to the season- opening NHRA Winternation- als in Pomona, California, last month, though. With a slew of projects underway here at Drag Illustrated, including a made- for-the-internet reality show we’re working on with driver Erica Enders, team owner Richard Freeman and the Elite Motorsports Pro Stock and Pro Mod team, I actually needed to go – just to be sure ev- erything we had in place went according to plan. I also simply wanted to go, as it’d be the only way that I felt I could access and understand where the highest level of drag racing was at in 2019 follow- ing a tumultuous offseason. With some big-name drivers on the sidelines, new cars and teams coming together, sponsorship changes, crew members and tuners moving around, and a good bit of change at the top of the NHRA itself, following along online or watching on television wasn’t going to suffice if I truly wanted to take stock of things. I’ve written a lot over the years about taking the time and doing the work required to form one’s own opinions. It might be easier to scroll through your Facebook timeline and just adopt the popular notion of the day, but when reporting on the sport of drag racing is what you do for a living, there’s really no replacement for a first-hand accounting of the situation. Looking up at a slam-packed grandstand on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the Fairplex, I couldn’t have been prouder. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t room for improvement and some blatant issues at our sport’s highest level, but pro-level drag racing is as bad ass as it ever has been – the spectacle is strong. While I’d love to see more effort put into star-building, more storytelling and overall pomp- and-circumstance on the NHRA national event scene, the issue that I see as the most glaring is a lack of communication – specifically between racers and team owners and sanction officials. At the root of every successful endeavor – be it a business, a relationship or a business relationship – is a strong base of communication. I talk publicly all the time about how important it is to identify goals, to try and “get everyone swimming in the same direction,” but those goals are meaningless if no one knows what they are, and any sort of synergy among a group is virtually impossible without the discussion, conver- sation and ongoing communica- tion required to get all involved to buy in. After I spent the second week- end of February in California, I spent the third in Valdosta, Georgia. While Donald Long’s Lights Out, now in its 10th annual running, has snagged almost all of the headlines in recent weeks and generated almost universal praise and enthusiasm, again, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t room for improvement – even at an event that I routinely refer to as “light- ning in a bottle.” Of course, wheelstands, world records and a slew of quotable characters – perhaps none more so than Donald “Duck” Long himself – are central to the success of Lights Out and his other various outlaw productions, I point to communica- tion as having played a massively significant role in carrying this event to where it is today. Long may not answer every phone call, or even be locatable at South Georgia Motorsports Park during one of his events, but the guerrilla-style, ground-floor com- munication he’s established with his racers and fans (and even sponsors) by way of social media, in my eyes, is the secret ingredient to his success. It may get vulgar and it may get excessive, but there is no denying its effectiveness. He’s an event promoter and a capitalist, he’s certainly in business to make money, but he’s a racer at heart and he cares enough about racers to communicate with them. I see that lacking in a lot of places today. That’s not to say you can “let the inmates run the asylum.” That’s a mistake, too, and a trap that many organizations – past and present – have fallen into. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: drag rac- ing is the great American motorsport. The pump is primed. Between the success of drag racing on primetime television, what I believe to be a renewed interest in hot rodding and car culture as a whole and the short attention span of people around the world – I don’t know what’s missing from a combi- nation of fierce competition among colorful, relat- able characters in the quickest and fastest cars on the planet other than communicating where we are, where we want to go and how we’re going to work together to get there. And I know that those efforts are being made. That’s perhaps what I’ve heard the most about NHRA’s direction in recent years – that there is a seemingly newfound willingness to listen. That goes both ways, of course, and I hope that it serves as the catalyst for another 60-some years of success and growth for everyone involved. DI DI DI DI DI DI DI DI DI DI Wesley R. Buck Founder & Editorial Director 8 | Drag I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com I invite you to email me at wes@dragillustrated.com and follow me at facebook.com/wbuck and wesbuckinc on Instagram. 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The publisher does not adopt any such statement or claims as its own, and any such statement or claim does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher. Issue 142 T FOUNDER’S LETTER