Searching For Sustainability..............

From an era of basically homemade racecars that you and your friends invested your time, welding skills, modified parts and backyard ingenuity to compete at the top levels of the sport, we’ve now got a sport that is way too expensive to sustain and absolutely impossible for the average guy to do anything but watch. Drag racing has evolved into a high-dollar parts ordering system of higher technology, supplied by one high-tech innovator or another.--Darr Hawthorne

We continue to ramp up a new season, pray for Eric Medlin, ponder how much 10.5 in tires can sustain in terms of HP...and local promoter momentum...and sit in confusion as the obvious solution of footbreak bracket racing declines in the scheduling of big tracks.....

Self-Insurance to circumvent sanctioning body powergrabbin' is the primary weapon available to small promoters. The business model on how to actually accomplish this has largely eluded me...until..possibly..this weekends' ADRL Houston meet-wrapping up as I write this. The NHRA has failed to shut er down, as the Texan's would put it, by refusing the Glendora 'HRA' policy as it would apply to ...well...the balance of the program, I'd expect. Kenny "the Gerbil" Nowling has done fahr'd the shot heard 'round the creature feature world by gettin' his own durn insurance rider to cover the no weight min. /no cube max./up to 50% in the tank "extreme" (gawd I hate that cliche'--and he makes his racers use it, instead of PM!) headliners. The ADRL www.adrl.us is, IMO, just another semi-worthless powergrabbin form. Same tired marketing attitude (primary sponsor, just announced, is....a stock trading outfit..sigh..) with autocratic and fully upfront 'discretion' by minions to rule on everything on the spot..Jim Tice wannabees without the humor.
Nowling going toe-to-toe with NHRA..and stockpiling legal plasma bags for the inevitable bloodletting (so we don't have to...) allows us to note the results and get the precedents established now...it makes me feel like an officer in Batu Kahn's easter Euro. campaign observing the tragic mechenasions of rival princes spreading their resources around in search of short-term gain...with no regard for the long-term. We bide our time....