I think they want to eliminate the 'certain death' side of Motorsport that would occur if you took away safety. There's always someone willing to strap themselves to a rocket and it makes sense for a sanctioning body to say they don't want to be a part of that. It's not that people can't run top fuel cars on the 1/4, there jut isn't an organization currently that will let them compete like that.
I think that's the concern with the NHRA, to lots of people they're just top fuel and funny cars with other classes as a sideshow. If nobody cares about the two top classes, what's left?
tuna55 wrote:
For the Sportsman leagues... no more throttle stops ever. I was bored like crazy watching those in person, on TV with no commentator, it's awful. It's a neat technique and it's a neat idea, but it's time to leave that behind.
For the love of God, this - I used to enjoy all the classes at the races, but in between the time I stopped going to the races late 80s/early 90s, and the time I went down to the track in the late 90's early 00's, I noticed the throttle stops on those cars - my first thought was, "wow, two guys had to shut it down, that's unusual". Then a couple more pairs of cars did it, and my thought was "that's lame".
The great fun of the sportsman classes were the wheel stands they did coming out of the hole, front end bouncing as they came down and screaming down the track.
Take somebody to a drag race for the first time and they see the cars "not race" after the start, and it's "wtf is that"?
I use to watch back when top fuel was in the mid 6 second range. Now holy cow are they fast.
Could you put a boost limit on the motors but keep the engine displacement. That way you would keep the big displacement sound but the hp would be dialed back. Get them back to the mid to upper 5 second runs in the quarter. I really don't know if as a spectator if I could tell the difference.
Just add weight (in the form of cages / protection) to the top fuels. Slows them up keeps the noise and might make them safer.
