NHRA has stood for No Hot Rods Allowed for much longer than 'now'.....since
about the late Sixties, or certainly by the Seventies. Ask anybody on this
list, and there are quite a few of us who have been around the drags since the
early Fifties, and raced in, wrenched in, and witnessed the "Golden Era of
Drag Racing" when very clever ideas and innovative designs thought up by tens
of thousands of crafty backyard mechanics and , and the increasing
availability of a whole array of new speed equipment made speeds continually
increase
and ET's drop ..... which they did, until new rules were dictated eliminating
entire classes of drag cars( AA/Gas Dragster, for example ~ It was a great
class ), and then, later on, dictating cstly rules changes, and then
restrictions on blowers, tire sizes, and nitro percentages limited power
outputs and
basically restricted the fuelers & funny cars from going any faster in
anything but minute increments .
NHRA has so sickeningly over-commercialized its' drag racing meets, and
turned it into the straight-line touring equivelant of NASCAR's totally
commercialized touring "road show of circular auto-related entertainment",
where we
cannot even watch those neat 'under-car' camera views of the right front
suspension working in the turns without seeing the sponsor's name plastered
right
there on the lower A-frame, or anywhere else an in-car camera gives us a
unique look at the car from inside or underneath. I do realize the sponsor
wants
more bang-for-his buck, and they do spend the big bucks needed to keep the
cars on the track and competitive. The car bodies and the drivers'(
'corporate spokespersons' )uniforms are covered, almost to the last few square
inches
of space, with a multitude of different advertising logos, and it goes on and
on .... Madison Avenue and Big Money has Changed the Face of Racing: That is
FOR SURE, and it won't be changing back to what we knew as the Golden Era of
Racing in BOTH venues ..... IT IS ALL ABOUT( BIG) MONEY NOW, and the 'Gold'
is in the coffers of the sanctioning bodies and the sponsors .........
All Things CHANGE with Time. ~ End of part 1 ~
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