Not only that, I would also include chassis design and shocks. Shocks
now are not what we had two years ago, and I hope two years from now
we have better stuff than what we have right now. But everybody in the
manufacturing side of our sport is so passionate about what we’re doing
that everyone is working extremely hard on their own products, so it gives
the racers a very diverse pool of product to pull from.
There are numerous places to race a nitrous doorslammer right now,
but there’s no denying NHRA Pro Mod is the big leagues for Pro Modified
racing. Performances have been continuously escalating, most recently
with an incredible field and numerous career-bests and national records
reset Gainesville. A handful of nitrous cars were in the mix, but they’re
still behind the supercharged and turbocharged cars. Have the nitrous
cars finally run out of room to improve?
CB: We’re pretty tapped out. It’s not to say we can’t run fast somewhere,
but as far as a season average, we can’t hang with ‘em. Everybody says,
“give ‘em the 959” or “take weight off ‘em.” The cars are about as light as
they can go. To be at 15-20 pounds over minimum weight, every one of
us has 20 pounds in the car. So the cars with nothing in them would be at
minimum weight now. They just took 25 pounds off of us, so all of us are
going to be overweight considerably.
And the 959 motor, I’ve had engine builders tell me – Pat Musi being one
of them – that he didn’t think the crankshafts would live. He told me this
last year whenever it first came up, and it was concerns over the crankshaft.
Our expense would go up drastically to go to the 959 or even the weight.
For us to take 25 pounds off the car is going to cost us about $20,000.
To go to the 959, for a motor and a spare motor, it would probably be a
minimum of a $150,000 investment.
PM: Yeah. They can take it any way they want it. I told (NHRA) at
Gainesville. They gave us 25 pounds, so I took the front end off of Chad
Green’s car and I said, “Which one of you Einsteins wants to figure out where
to get 25 pounds off this car? And meet your safety rules? You tell me and
I’ll do it. You want me to cut the guy’s leg off?” We can’t get any weight off
the car. They look at you dumbfounded. So they gave us 25 pounds, which
is basically nothing. And that’s what I told them. They can like me, hate
me, whatever. You need X amount of weight pucks in the front to make
the car work, so we’re done. The only thing they could possibly do is give
us the bigger motor, but I don’t think that’s going to do it, personally. But
where we’re at right now, we have nothing left.
(NHRA) avoided me like the plague because I’m on them nonstop about
the 25 pounds. They got sick of hearing from me, basically.
Here’s what I say: they’re listening to people who don’t have the years I
have of building engines. I know what the blowers make, I know what the
turbos make – better than (NHRA) knows – and I know what we make.
And they won’t even hear me out. You got a guy who’s seen it all, been
building motors for 50 years? Come on. It’s very frustrating.
There’s two things they can do, one or the other. They need to slow those
guys down or give us the big engine, which really is going to be a close
deal. We gotta do our R&D and work on it to make it better, but we need
to know what direction to go. We can’t get any lighter. This joke about
taking 25 out, they know better.
BS: There’s always going to be room for growth. I think it’s going to be
at a rate that’s probably not even half of what the other combinations are
growing at. You’re still dealing with an engine that’s naturally aspirated. A
naturally aspirated engine is about one of the oldest things in engineering,
so to make advancements on it...yeah, we put nitrous in it, no doubt, but
you can’t make it swallow more nitrous than the engine wants to move
into air flow. Once it gets to a certain percentage, the engine gets pissed
off and there’s nothing you can do about that. We’re up against harder
physics to change than the other combinations.
PDRA Pro Nitrous elapsed
time record holder Jay
Cox credits improvements
in electronic fuel injection
technology as one of the
contributing factors for
the reduction in carnage
within the world of big
cubic-inch, high-horse-
power nitrous racing.
May 2019
DragIllustrated.com
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