SteveR
03-20-2010, 05:15 AM
...and can you explain to me exactly what in the hell they did? I've always been a supporter of them because of their support and development of the Pro Mod class when NHRA treated them like the red headed step child and didn't do hardly anything for the class to the point where the drivers (most notably Mike Castellana from NY) had to put up their own purse for the race they were running at NHRA events and only now is NHRA showing them some respect, and the IHRA's support of the mountain motor Pro Stock class.
I couldn't sleep tonight, mainly because it was 67 degrees today and now it's snowing and there's purple lightning and that's just fuggin weird, so I turned on the trusty Speed Channel and they had a bunch of 2009 IHRA season recap shows on. At one point they were talking about some major change in IHRA starting in 2010, so I decided to search the good 'ol web to see what they were talking about. .........WTF. That's all I can say. Seems IHRA is now owned by Feld Entertainment, the same people that own USHRA, the monster truck sanctioning body. I looked around at the IHRA schedule, and the schedules for each individual race, and looked at all the news postings. Looks like IHRA is moving to an exhibition only type format. I'm sure they will have some sort of 'points system', but it won't really mean much, even if they do it. They'll be doing what the monster trucks do at each stop on the tour, which is running the same schedule each day, so one qualifying run for the pro classes each day followed by eliminations each day, and each pro category is now only an 8 car field. Oh, and they won't have 80% of the 'pro' categories anymore. No more nitro funny car, no more top alcohol dragster, no more top alcohol funny car, no more Pro Mod, and no more Pro Stock. You get Top Fuel dragster, Pro Fuel (whatever the hell that is. Looks like some slight difference from Top Fuel), and nostalgia funny car. That's it. You also get a wheelstanding bus, and a jet truck. Mix in some sportsman classes to help foot the bill from entry fees. Top Dragster and Top Sportsman might be worth seeing. I guess the few exhibition and test runs at Atco years ago when they were an IHRA track will be the only mountain motor Pro Stock runs I'll ever see. At least I got to see a few.
Combine all this with IHRA constantly switching up it's 'national event' (I use that term loosely now) tracks each year and it makes planning to go see one of their events even that much harder, especially considering most of their tracks run north and south along a thin line through the middle of the country into Canadia (FL, NC, MI, Alberta, Ontario, MD, VA [just switched back to IHRA from NHRA], Louisiana [former NHRA national event track], UT [former NHRA national event track], and NH). It used to be even more linear when they had one other in MI (Milan), one other in Canadia, and Norwalk, OH.
Looks like NHRA is now the only drag racing sanctioning body running an elimination points style championship format.
I couldn't sleep tonight, mainly because it was 67 degrees today and now it's snowing and there's purple lightning and that's just fuggin weird, so I turned on the trusty Speed Channel and they had a bunch of 2009 IHRA season recap shows on. At one point they were talking about some major change in IHRA starting in 2010, so I decided to search the good 'ol web to see what they were talking about. .........WTF. That's all I can say. Seems IHRA is now owned by Feld Entertainment, the same people that own USHRA, the monster truck sanctioning body. I looked around at the IHRA schedule, and the schedules for each individual race, and looked at all the news postings. Looks like IHRA is moving to an exhibition only type format. I'm sure they will have some sort of 'points system', but it won't really mean much, even if they do it. They'll be doing what the monster trucks do at each stop on the tour, which is running the same schedule each day, so one qualifying run for the pro classes each day followed by eliminations each day, and each pro category is now only an 8 car field. Oh, and they won't have 80% of the 'pro' categories anymore. No more nitro funny car, no more top alcohol dragster, no more top alcohol funny car, no more Pro Mod, and no more Pro Stock. You get Top Fuel dragster, Pro Fuel (whatever the hell that is. Looks like some slight difference from Top Fuel), and nostalgia funny car. That's it. You also get a wheelstanding bus, and a jet truck. Mix in some sportsman classes to help foot the bill from entry fees. Top Dragster and Top Sportsman might be worth seeing. I guess the few exhibition and test runs at Atco years ago when they were an IHRA track will be the only mountain motor Pro Stock runs I'll ever see. At least I got to see a few.
Combine all this with IHRA constantly switching up it's 'national event' (I use that term loosely now) tracks each year and it makes planning to go see one of their events even that much harder, especially considering most of their tracks run north and south along a thin line through the middle of the country into Canadia (FL, NC, MI, Alberta, Ontario, MD, VA [just switched back to IHRA from NHRA], Louisiana [former NHRA national event track], UT [former NHRA national event track], and NH). It used to be even more linear when they had one other in MI (Milan), one other in Canadia, and Norwalk, OH.
Looks like NHRA is now the only drag racing sanctioning body running an elimination points style championship format.