The sanctioning body appears to be taking a more welcoming approach to teams’ efforts to excite existing fans and draw new ones. In the early 2000s, two Top Fuel teams set up webcams in their pits so fans could see what the crew does in preparing the cars. But NHRA officials ordered the teams to remove the cameras.
Jeffrey Young, vice president of marketing and communications for NHRA, said, “We’ve tried to relax these rules, because it’s important to get content out there. I think there was a mindset of protecting content, and there still is in certain aspects. But with social media evolving, you’ve got to open up. You’ve got to loosen those rules a little bit and allow access and allow people to post and put more content out.”
Young said NHRA plans to ramp up its presence on You Tube and just last month jumped into the short-form video world of TikTok. He said the latter is “the big emerging one right now and that’s really concentrated on the younger generation, a younger demographic. I think that’s important for us as we try to target a younger audience.”
Poring over the research data, Rau said, helps NHRA to “understand our fan base very well. We try to go after companies that could make inroads and gain customers within our fan base. Our fan base is extremely loyal to our partners, and we’re very happy that they continue to show up and show out for our partners. Ultimately, it boils down to we need to go out and get more partners so that we can make sure that this sport continues to thrive and grow and we can gain more fans.”
Today, the NHRA racer isn’t just a racer. He or she is a marketer extraordinaire, building and promoting an individual brand.
That’s at the heart of Don Garlits’ legendary argument with Wally Parks. Garlits said the racers were the stars, while Parks insisted the cars were the stars. Social media have tugged racers in the direction Garlits would be pleased to see. Garlits did it on his own, but the racers are tech-savvy in circles beyond their car mechanics.
Leah Pruett earned a bachelor’s degree in communications with an emphasis in mass media and a minor in sports and entertainment marketing from Cal State — San Bernardino, purposely gearing her college education to a discipline that would benefit her sponsorship search. She has definite ideas about how to point drag racing back to the level of popularity it enjoyed in its heyday.
“How we get it there, in my opinion, is exposure,” Pruett said. “With the exposure comes the value. When you have value, you have partners. When you have partners, you have money that’s going into the sport, that’s making the experience better for everybody, from the racers to the fans. With the money coming in, we can have more teams: more teams, better competition. So, in my opinion, it comes with the exposure. It relies on personalities. It relies on different media or social-media outlets, not hinging everything we do on FOX. It’s a great platform, but we can’t rely completely on that. We need to support it with everything else that we have.”
Pruett has the largest single following for any professional drag racer.
“It’s because I recognized early on that I needed other entities to help promote me and my partners to get to a level that I knew I could turn around and in four or five years add value to partners that I have today,” Pruett said. “Some crew chiefs, their wheels are turning about how to make things better, and they win championships. I started thinking about this five years ago, and, finally, now it is paying off. There’s a reason I spend a lot of time doing it. It’s not because I really enjoy it. It’s because it’s valuable.
“I’m happy to see the way the NHRA direction has been going for the youth. Do I wish I got to be on that train? Yeah. But if I was on that train then and I was promoted at that time, I think I’d be in a different spot than I am right now,” she continued. “I might not have understood social media and how I needed it more than anybody else back then. I wouldn’t be in the place I’m at now. I feel like I’m not ‘the little guy’ at the track anymore.”
So social media played a key role in her steady climb to the top tier of the sport. And Wally Parks would have enjoyed the wow factor of this brave new digital world.