You may have read the title to this column and thought to yourself, “Are you crazy, isn’t the point to go quicker and faster?” Yes, it is…but hear me out on this.
As was alluded to in our recent feature We Rank ‘Em: The Top 10 Biggest, Baddest Runs Of 2014, this a truly incredible time to be a fan of drag racing. Over the last handful of years — and during the 2014 campaign in particular — we’ve witnessed barriers shattered and records annihilated at a pace and by margins rivaling that of any other period in the sixty-plus year history of organized drag racing.
Better tires, slicker bodies, electronic fuel injection, traction control, carbn billet-everything, high-tech engine management systems and boost and nitrous controllers have all helped to make it possible, as technology in drag racing parallels that of consumers goods by growing at a truly explosive rate. As well, it doesn’t hurt that racers have a seemingly endless supply of discretionary income, despite an economy that says they shouldn’t.
This is a great thing, don’t get me wrong. I’ve long contended that big numbers on the scoreboard are and always have been the most exciting part of our sport, and are the driver of technological advancement as much as, if not moreso, than actually winning drag races. But is it all advancing too rapidly today for its own good?
We can borrow a page out of history, and perhaps even big business strategy, to help illustrate this point, as entities from the military to computer processor manufacturers have long been well ahead of the market in development of new technologies. But there’s simply no rush to push this technology to the public, because quite frankly, there’s money to be made by strategically launching products in increments rather than all at once. Unless their hand is forced, they can extend the lifespan of their existing technology as they work to build the next.
As consumers, we may call that greediness, but that’s a topic for another time and place. Regardless, it points out how it’s always a wise decision to keep something in reserve, if you will.
The rapid explosion in the performance department in drag racing in recent years has been as much about technology as rules simply allowing it to happen.
Using radial tire racing as an example, David Wolfe made the very first run under 4.50-seconds in the fall of 2010. Just a scant five years later, Brad Edwards has gone 3.99 in competition and 3.94 in testing. On the quarter-mile, Dave Hance made the first six-second run in 2009, and just over five years later, a radial car has gone 6.11, with all the potential there for a 5.99. Sure, tuners and engine builders have worked wonders in those five years, but the rules have really opened things up as today’s radial cars have morphed into anything-goes-on-a-radial (even nitrous oxide combined with twin-turbos), with very little differentiating them from legitimate Pro Modified cars.
Another excellent case in point is Hot Rod’s Drag Week, where the rules in the Unlimited category have been laxed to allow virtually anything with wheels and an engine to compete. As a result, the record for the class dropped more than half a second in one year (not the average elapsed time), and if not this year, certainly by 2016, we will have likely witnessed a run near the limit of what a street legal vehicle can deliver.
The big draw for Drag Week has been the steady progression of the world record and the battles to capture it, and had Hot Rod been more stringent with their rules package, they could’ve easily stretched their product out for 10-15 years as racers worked their way down into the five-second zone. Instead, they’ve bet all their chips at once to see what a carbon fiber-bodied Pro Mod with a trailer hitch can do — Right. Now. And once they get there, then what’s left?
The NHRA, for its part, has done an excellent job of holding the reigns on its professional categories over the years. If you look back throughout history, you’ll find that elapsed times and speeds have advanced at a fairly consistent pace since the 1960’s, even with all of the new technology at racers’ disposal during the 1990’s and into the 2000’s. This is mostly a byproduct of rules that have remained stable for decades.
But the NHRA also presents perhaps the best example of what can occur when a class advances too far.
Their 1,000-foot ruling was, in 2008, a temporary measure in the wake of Scott Kalitta’s tragic death until a more long-term solution could be administered to keep its drivers safe. But the continuing use of that distance over the last six years is proof that the nitro classes have tapped themselves out in their current configuration — they’re too quick, too fast, too much of a risk to keep racing an entire 1,320 feet.
Of course a byproduct of allowing so much in a given class is that a large divide is drawn between the “haves” and “have nots”…
The fact is, unlike the 1960’s or 70’s, there isn’t a wide-open sea ahead in terms of performance. We’ve reached a point of diminishing returns, where chassis certifications, track lengths, and a focus on safety in general are limiting how much is left on the table. Like in business, there’s a strategy to extending your product into the future, and all-out, anything-goes rules that bet all your chips on today — while certainly exciting in the near-term — instead of tomorrow will result in everyone racing 1,000-feet, eighth-mile, or 330-feet. Or worse, on an index.