SEATTLE — Don’t expect the National Hot Rod Ass’n to change anything with its schedule anytime soon.
However, it should — especially if it cares anything about costs and making professional drag racing affordable to teams, not to mention healthy marriages and families.
The sport needs more cars and more competitors. Surprisingly a significant number of racers have cars, licenses and the desire to run Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle — but not the astronomical budget it takes today.
Furthermore, the 2020 schedule is shaping up to be a grind even more than it has been.
June kicks off a brutal stretch of the 24-race Mello Yello Drag Racing Series tour with three straight race weekends, followed by one week off before four more in consecutive weeks.
That gives teams 11 days to get from Seattle to northern Minnesota and New Hampshire a week later. The schedule shows one week off before the strategic U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, but it really isn’t a week off — it’s a week largely devoted to testing.
A 10-day respite ends with three more races in a row. That’s 13 races and a key test session in 15 weeks.
“Oh, boo-hoo,” unsympathetic NASCAR fans and drivers might say.
But here’s the meandering NHRA route: Topeka, Kan.; Bristol, Tenn.; Norwalk, Ohio; Joliet, Ill.; Morrison, Colo.; Sonoma, Calif.; Seattle, Wash.; Brainerd, Minn.; Epping, N.H.; Indianapolis; Mohnton, Pa.; Concord, N.C.; and Madison, Ill.
That’s enough to support Funny Car veteran Jack Wyatt’s claim that “nitromethane is the most powerful substance on Earth — it dissolves bank accounts and marriages in an instant.”
Formula One received some criticism after announcing two additions to next year’s schedule, in Vietnam and The Netherlands, to make the circuit 22 races long.
Max Verstappen warned that it might trigger divorces for crew members and Jacques Villeneuve predicted, “The calendar is becoming too long and boring. The new owners of the championship see more races as more income and that’s all that excites them. The calendar is getting longer and the audience is getting more bored. It’s too much.”
It’s debatable whether Villeneueve or Verstappen can speak for the fans and participants. But in the drag-racing world, the 24-race schedule is taking a financial toll on teams, and the NHRA would be smart to work toward fixing that.
The costs for parts, fuel and putting the car on the race track are escalating along with the costs of having the haulers crisscross the country and getting the drivers and crews there by air and situated in hotels. Add in hospitality, and the list is backbreaking.
Consider the situation in which outgoing Top Fuel driver Cory McCleanthan, a four-time series runner-up with 34 victories, became trapped.
“The 24-event thing, it just is so taxing on everybody, money-wise, people-wise, driver-wise,” he said. “No life at home, you’re on the road all the time. I experienced it in every way. Did it with the motorhome, marriage, marriage failed because of not being home. I like to be there and take care of my animals and work on the house and stuff, and after a while you find yourself … I have an apartment and I’ve got the motorhome because I’m not using anything. So it was like OK — sell the house, sell the boat, sell your stuff off.
“It just never seems to be a solid foundation and that’s what I’m all about,” McClenathan added. “I like the family thing.”
The consensus was that the NHRA was picking on the Pro Stock class a year ago by trimming its appearances on the tour to 18 races. However, competitors seem content with that, from an economic and personal standpoint.
McClenathan gets it.
“When I started, it was 18 (races). And then it built and built and I think we’re overbuilt,” he said. “It’s like if we scale back a little bit, not only could the smaller teams afford to do it, I think you’d see more fans at more races and the stands would be packed. Everybody’s still going to make money and everybody’s still going to get their piece of the pie and the sponsor will still be happy because collectively you’ve gone out and done better at 18 races where you’re pushing the envelope to do 24.”
Of course, scheduling is far more difficult than most imagine.
Still, McClenathan said, “Look at some of the races that we do twice a year. At the same time, there are some of those venues that they just don’t bring in the crowds anymore. Let’s just be a businessman about it and really look at it. Is it really healthy for everybody? I would be completely cool with it if they backed up to 18-20 races and knocked out a few.”
For the sanctioning body, expansion has that air of progress and success. But it should consider economics’ Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility: The more and more one gets of something, the less and less it’s valuable.
It’s a topic the NHRA should ponder.