Your Two Cents: If You Could Attend One Race, Which Would It Be?

Here at Dragzine, we make it a point to provide our readers with a solid tasting of every facet of this great sport on our digital magazine pages, from the pomp and circumstance of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series all the way down to grass roots, blue collar, local bracket racing, and in all of that, by the numbers, we’ve been able to witness the gradual shift that our sport has undergone.

There’s no mistaking that the demographics of drag racing have changed over the last quarter century. In drag racing’s heyday, you raced with the NHRA, the IHRA, the AHRA, or you match raced. But as the years passed, the simple makeup of categories defined by the HRA’s that comprised much of drag racing, even on the local scale, began to morph and fragment, leading us to where we are today, with more drag racing organizations — national, regional, and local — than Quaker has oats. Now, don’t get us wrong, this is a great thing, but it’s had its effects on where the racers go and where spectators spend their money, as well.

Before the sport really took off in every direction, the NHRA national events, and to a lesser extent, the IHRA and AHRA events, were the races that drag racing fans around the world saved their vacation days and their pennies to attend. Indy, Pomona, Englishtown, and the Gators were can’t-miss events, as everyone wanted to see Garlits, Shirley, Bernstein, McCullough, Kalitta, and the rest of the sure-fire hall of famers live and in person. If you could see one drag race all year, the NHRA was the place.

But then, in the course of just a couple of decades, Pro Stock, Super Stock, and Stock spawned off Top Sportsman and then Pro Modified, and then came Pro Street, Outlaw 10.5, and Drag Radial, and next thing you knew, there with exciting, high-profile drag racing events 20 minutes from home.

You can see where we’re going with this: the outward sprawl fragmented the fanbase, meaning there were the same number of fans (or less) with so many more options to spend their disposable income. At the same time, and perhaps simply owed to the interests of this generation, we’ve also seen a changing of the guard, so to speak. While Indy and Pomona are seeing more and more empty seats, events like the Yellow Bullet Nationals, the Shakedown, the World Street Nationals, and others are gaining in popularity. Those same gearheads that may have once purchased a ticket to see John Force, are instead going to see the Bruder Brothers, or Frankie Taylor, or Mike Murillo.

There are lots of options these days, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. So we want to hear it: if you could attend any one event, hosted by any promoter or racing organization, what would it be? The NHRA? The ADRL or X-DRL, or perhaps the NMCA and NMRA? Or maybe the one-off races like No Mercy, The Yellow Bullet Nationals, or the Street Car Super Nationals? Comments below and tell us your thoughts.