It’s hard to tell which was worse on Sept. 20 at zMAX Dragway during the NHRA Carolina Nationals – Terry McMillen’s Top Fuel engine explosion, or the enormous $8,000 penalty that came with it.

Maybe worst of all was McMillen’s wondering aloud whether he could afford to compete any longer. Because that oildown was McMillen’s fifth of the season and second in as many races, his last two fines alone added up to $14,000. And that was a huge hit to his sufficient but conservative budget.

“Right after the run, the Safety Safari came over and wanted me to take a ride in the ambulance and get checked out,” McMillen said. “I told them I don’t need a doctor – I need a banker.”

That remark might launch a stand-up comedy career for the owner-driver of the Amalie Oil-UNOH Dragster, but it was no laughing matter. Ultimately, it’s part of the costs that are driving teams from the sport.

Long-time Top Fuel racer Steve Chrisman, whose family helped pioneer the sport, is stepping aside and selling his dragster, trailer, and equipment.

“I’ve got plenty of money,” Chrisman said, explaining his decision. “It’s just the way that NHRA runs their whole deal. There’s probably 10 things, but one of the main reasons is the oildown penalty is just ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense to pay a fine for something you’re not trying to do. We had an oildown this year and blew a fitting in two. It wasn’t like we left it off or we ran our motor too hard and it blew up. The fitting gave up. It cost me 1,000 bucks. It only had 20 runs on it. What are you going to do? It was a parts failure.”

Chrisman is talking McMillen’s language.

McMillen said, “That explosion had nothing to do with the ability of my crew chief Rob Wendland or my crew,” he said. “In fact, there was a winning tune-up in the car.”

McMillen was leading eventual winner Antron Brown in that first-round match-up at Charlotte when his tires began to spin at about 330 feet downtrack. McMillen lifted off the throttle to let his car settle down, then stepped on the gas again, hoping to pedal the car to a victory. That’s when the engine dropped five of the eight cylinders, leaving an excessive amount of fuel in the intake manifold. Once the fuel ignited, the intake and injector split and oil escaped, causing the explosion.

“I think fans paid to see a race,” McMillen said. “They don’t want to see a car with the lead idle down the track. It’s a driver’s instinct to pedal the car in a situation like this. I’m not going to lift and just wait for him to go around me without trying to do something. Is that the kind of racing people want to see? I don’t think so, but I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed – or an eight car field when they run the few remaining independents out of town.

“Oildowns happen to everyone,” McMillen said. “There are at least four teams who have also paid $21,000 in fines this year [Bob Vandergriff Racing, Morgan Lucas Racing, Kalitta Motorsports, and in Funny Car, John Force Racing and Tony and Cruz Pedregon].” He said that “validates that oildowns happen to every team, every crew, every crew chief. Though they happen to all of us, they impact us all differently.

“I know we have to control oildowns. If it’s our fault – if we left an oil line off or didn’t tighten the rod bolts – that’s our fault. Fine me. We deserve that,” McMillen said. “But if someone has an idea on how to contain oil from the intake or when it’s pumping out of the headers, I’m listening. We keep making bigger bombs with bigger fuel pumps and heads, and then putting these cars on marginal tracks. Stuff is going to happen. It makes the highlight reel. They’ll post it all over social media, use it on the TV show to get us to watch – and fine us for it. Maybe we can get some royalties from that to help pay for the parts we need to get to St. Louis.”

Said Chrisman, “It’s never fair when you have a monetary fine on something whenever you’re racing billionaires.” Furthermore, he said, “Next year we’re going to have quicker turnaround times because of the live TV, and in turn, there are probably going to be stricter oildown rules.”

All teams got a break on Tuesday evening with the NHRA’s announcement that it is reducing the penalties for oildowns, effective immediately, and stepping up efforts to work with teams to find technical solutions to the oildown causes.

Until further notice, the NHRA has capped escalating penalties for oildowns at $3,000 ($1,000 for first violation, $2,000 for the second violation, and $3,000 for the third and subsequent occurrences).

Still, Chrisman said he takes issue with mandates that cost teams a significant amount of money, then are rescinded, costing them yet more outlay, only to end up with equipment they had in the first place. For instance, he cited a series of contradicting rules regarding back-halving of the chassis that “cost us $15,000, and it didn’t make sense. That’s money just thrown away.

“They have no guidance anywhere,” he said of the Technical Department. More than a few racers have expressed the notion that NHRA inspections are less about proper technical procedures and more about basic safety checks.

Add it all up, and Chrisman said, “The main thing is they don’t care about the little guys, period. They told me straight out they don’t. You have no say-so in anything, although we run about one-third of the races a year, which is quite a bit for an independent.”

He said, “At Denver a few years back, we make our runs and I come up for our fourth qualifying runs and [a high-ranking NHRA official] said, ‘Why are you running? There’s only 16 cars.’ I said, “Well, there’s only 16 cars. I figured it’s better for the show if there are more cars.’ He said, ‘Actually, Steve, we don’t care if you guys run, as long as the big guys do.’ He said it on the starting line. I go, ‘Really? OK.’ So there’s a lot of hostility from the little guys because of how they’re treated.

“The reason we’ve done it is my family has done it for 60 years,” Chrisman said.

In Tuesday’s announcement, the NHRA said, “Crew chiefs have been asked to share more detailed information with the Tech Department on the root cause of each oildown to aid in technical analysis and prevention practices, and the Tech Department will share oildown data across all teams. NHRA’s own Safety Safari team has also implemented new techniques to speed cleanup.”

That’s noble, but it’s a little too late to help popular part-time Top Fuel racer T.J. Zizzo, who had three expensive engine explosions with his Rust-Oleum Dragster at Indianapolis. Long before that, before he arrived at the U.S. Nationals, he had decided because of exorbitant costs (and increased business at his family’s suburban Chicago body shop) to skip several Countdown races in which he had hoped to compete.

Mike Kern, his crew chief, laid out the reality.

“We have multi-car teams. We have mega teams, independent full-time teams, and independent part-time teams. All are out there trying to qualify and win races.  Naturally, we think that it comes down to how much money a team has,” he said. “This is partly true, but what factors in even more is how that money is spent.

“What I have come to realize is that while the big teams do probably have more money, what they have even more of is efficiency. They are more efficient with their money and everything else in many, many ways.  They have one roof for all of the teams. They have purchasing power to buy parts and supplies at large-quantity discounts. They have informational efficiencies, crew efficiencies, equipment efficiencies, marketing efficiencies and most important of all, run efficiency,” Kern said.

“What do I mean by run efficiency?  I mean they have all the runs of all their teams to learn from and make corrections when there is a problem. What they also have is us, the needy – needy in the sense that we don’t have all of these ‘efficiencies,’ which causes us to rely on them for lots of things,” he said.

“We, for example, can’t buy new blocks and heads, so we buy them used from the bigger teams. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad parts, just that they are used. Yes, they work just fine … most of the time. Sometimes though, you have to ask yourself, ‘If it’s not good enough for them, how is it good enough for us to try and beat them with it?’ Yes, we also have plenty of help from these teams, and I’m not talking bad about them. They help us out a ton, and we always appreciate it,” Kern said. “What I’m saying is that there is a large discrepancy between the haves and the have nots, and it’s not all due to money.”

He said the differences begin to show at the racetrack.

“A big team will blow one up, burn it, and oil the track. They will get fined, and they will go back to their pit and have everything they need to make it exactly back to the way it was an hour before (another efficiency). A small team will do the same, except when they go back to their pit, they might be missing a this or a that because they just don’t have everything in multiples like a big team – which is not efficient,” Kern said. “This is fine when it happens one time, but when it happens a second time and now you’re scrambling to put the car together in a short amount of time, your crew isn’t seasoned, etc., something is bound to get missed.

“It becomes a snowball effect that is hard to get a handle on. That’s when you start to get into big trouble. Again, money helps because you could just keep buying parts and bolting them on. Will it fix the problem? Maybe. If you have enough money, you just build your own multi-car team and start to subsidize yourself. That would be great if there was enough sponsor money out there for the teams to do that.”

Said Kern, “These are a few of the issues that we deal with on a regular basis and any one of them is typically why I quit at least once every race we attend. It is usually short-lived, as the desire to compete always trumps the pitfalls. It is quite satisfying as a part-time crew chief to go out and compete against and hold my own with the best in the world at what they do – even more so when you beat them with the parts they didn’t want anymore.”

Chrisman understands that mentality. He used an example from a Denver event to illustrate.

“Not saying that we would have beaten [Tony] Schumacher, but first round we go out there and drop a cylinder. So I went out 300 feet and shut it off. After that, Schumacher blows up terribly, drives it all the way to the finish line, and wins. He doesn’t care about coughing up $1,000 for a fine. And we’re trying not to oil it down because you don’t want to pay the fine. So you race in a different way – not that we’re going to be competitive,” he said.

“We just want to be able to do it, because our family has done it for 55 years. So it’s in your blood. But now, with the rules, they’re running people like us out. And who’s going to come back and race? It’s not very attractive,” Chrisman said.

However, he said, if conditions were right he always could buy equipment and return to competition.

“It would have to change so drastically, and that won’t happen in the environment that they have. They’re not going to change the rules.”

McMillen doesn’t want to park his car and sell his assets. He simply wants the chance to be competitive with a reasonable budget.

“I said a lot things out of frustration during my top-end interview,” McMillen said the Monday after the Charlotte race. “I meant all of it. We do have to evaluate where we are. I have no idea how we’re going to get to the next race. But I know this: we’re going down swinging.”

The hope is that no one has to go down at all.