Quote: Joe, 1) What are your thoughts on today's highly sponsored driven Pro category drag racing culture? 2) Is it where you would have hoped to see the sport grown to or does it miss the mark that your generation of racers set forth with in the 70's? 3) Today the Pro categories are thinning in numbers and suspect the economy could in fact cripple current sponsorships....what were common numbers of cars that would show up to qualify in those days
Thanks for taking the time for some questions us "kids" with inquiring minds would find fascinating to know!!
1) I think today's sponsorship environment is just the evolution of what we experienced in the 70's. If you look back to those times, we (the Missile crew) had Chrysler Mopar Parts as our primary sponsor with associate sponsorships from Lee Eliminators, Trick Titanium, Fenton, etc. Certainly the dollars involved in those days were much different than today but none the less they were needed. The primary difference we had was Chrysler's money. They funded just about everything for us from salaries to parts. The top teams of the era had backing in one way or another from the factories. Either they were given parts or parts and cash. The regional PS racer of the day pretty much had to look for help from local entities like dealers or speed shops for help. Today, the costs of running in the pro categories is astronomical. To show up and be competitive takes tons of talent and tons of cash. Often, talent is more plentiful than the cash. Thus the need for the deep pocket sponsorships. I don't have a crystal ball that would predict the "look" of today without the big sponsorship dollars but things would most probably be downsized from what we now see.
2) Yes, I like what I see in the Pro ranks today. The technologies being utilized by these racers is really amazing and like I said above is the evolution of what was pioneered in the 70's. The impact of television has really helped but as everyone knows, drag racing is really tough to package into a 2-3 hour segment like NASCAR so there is an "impact" loss for the viewer. Drag racing needs to be experienced in person. The sights, sounds, and smells are what capture the excitement. If the industry can figure out how to make it more affordable to take your family out to the track then maybe it can grow even more and launch the next generation of racers.
3) Today we qualify 16 cars to make up the field in the pro ranks. In the 70's the fields were typically made up of 32 cars. I am not sure of the dates when this changed but it makes a lot of sense. I don't remember how many cars would be sent home as non qualifiers in those days but I would guess that there were not too many. The fact of the matter was the spread between the #1 qualifier and the #32 qualifier could have been as much as a full second or more!!! Today, these classes see the full field qualify within a couple of hundredths!
