Showing up at Indianapolis for the restart of the season set Top Fuel owner-driver Terry McMillen, the No. 3 qualifier, back $4,123 for nitro and alcohol. It would have been even more expensive had he advanced to the final round.
“We’re just being penalized for trying to keep the sport alive,” McMillen said. “Even the big teams are feeling the squeeze on this.”
Add to that the fact NHRA officials reduced the payouts by one-third. Josh Peterson, NHRA vice president of racing administration, justified the purse reduction by saying one-third of the racing was gone with the move from three days to two.
The previous winner’s share was $50,000 in Top Fuel and Funny Car. Winners during the pandemic have received $35,000. The payoff for first-round finishers dropped from $10,000 to $7,500.
Racers and team owners argue the payouts are critical to continued participation.
Shoestring-budget racer Terry Haddock owns the Funny Car he drives and a Top Fuel dragster that Cameron Ferré usually drives but that Todd Paton used to upset top qualifier Clay Millican on July 19. Haddock says he gets frustrated when people don’t understand the concept by which he and others compete, when they say, “You’ll save money not racing.
“That’s a misconception,” Haddock explained. “Most people don’t realize that us smaller teams, we don’t have tons of money. We get help while we’re racing, not while we’re sitting at home. We survive on the qualifying checks. And it’s not a good business model, but it gets you through. It’s by no way enough to keep going. But you can’t do it without it. It’s a big shell game. This isn’t a good business plan. It’s actually really stupid. We’ve just managed to make it work.”
McMillen called the situation “insane” and said of the payout, “Ultimately, that’s what helped pay for the nitro. That’s what helped pay for hotel rooms. Some will argue that you’re saving money because you’re not running two extra runs. But the fact of the matter is the fixed costs are still the fixed costs. It takes X-amount of dollars to get here, X-amount of dollars toward the hotel rooms. I’m hoping that next season they change that — and even look at raising the purse. We’ve had the same purse for … it seems like it’s been the same forever.”
Scott Gardner, a partner with Straightline Strategy Group that fields Millican’s Top Fuel team, said, “We absolutely need the income from racing to keep us in business. The income we generate from the events for our business is both from purse monies and hospitality services we provide and is vital to cover the operational costs of travel.”
With a diminished payout, he said, “It would be more than difficult for us to be an active participant. We simply don’t have the resources to the cover the travel overhead without it. We might be able to participate as race-and-park team without those additional resources, but we have no interest in that model. We go to races to win.”
Tony Schumacher, the eight-time champion sidelined all last year and for the first half of 2020, competes to win, too. He leads the Top Fuel class’ list of all-time winners with 84. He came back for at least a cameo appearance to help fill the field as did Cory McClenathan, a 34-time winner who had stepped away from the class last fall.
Neither lasted past the first round at either of the two July races and McClenathan missed the cut at the second.
But some of the newcomers and journeymen had two great weekends. Oehler won the bike-class season debut, a coup for him and longtime motorcycle mechanical magician dad Brad Oehler.
During the second July event, the Top Fuel division featured two first-time finalists: Justin Ashley, the 25-year-old rookie-of-the-year candidate and 45-year-old veteran part-timer T.J. Zizzo.
“Everybody is going to rally around this,” Zizzo said. “It’s a young buck, a 20-something-year-old and some old bald guy trying to get it done for 28 years. This is exciting! It’s going to be a huge day.”
Maybe Zizzo spoke for everyone when he said, “The cool thing about being at these two events is that they’ve taken me away from everything that’s going on in this world. These days people need something to root for or somebody to root for. They can do it right here.”