For
over half a century, drag racing has been about pushing
the envelope through the endless pursuit to build a car that will go
faster and
accelerate more quickly than the guy in the other lane.
The
idea of driving Swamp Rat I to 176 miles
per hour is enough to send chills down your spine at just the thought
of
strapping into an early dragster with absolutely zero creature comforts. The
quest to out do the other racers is a spirit that
remains alive and well. Whether its Pro
Stock hitter Mike Edwards trying to keep his slim advantage over the
rest of
the field or a test and tune racer trying to eek out an extra tenth to
show up
his friends, drag racers continually push their cars harder and harder. This
could not be truer today, than in the Pro Modified and
Top Sportsman / Top Dragster categories. A
6.00-second pass in a
Pro Mod car is old news and some Top Dragster
entries consistently dial their rail in the 6.0-range.
Yes,
this makes for a thrilling show from the
grandstands – cars on the edge of control from start to
finish and sometimes
still on the brink long past the finish line. But
a recent outbreak in Pro Mod crashes
might be the
tipping point of reclassifying these cars from on the edge of control
to out of
control. Have such categories
gotten out
of hand? Drag racing is a
voluntary sport
and nobody is forced to participate. But
do these categories have a long term future if several cars are
destroyed before
eliminations? It is no secret that
Pro
Mod teams do not race on a NASCAR budget with back up cars waiting in
the
trailer. What happens if enough
entries
are out of commission that they no longer assemble a full field? Share
your thoughts on this topic. Do you think
the racing
is out of control or do you see the
recent recklessness
of the Pro Mod cars taming down in the future just as the Pro
Stock and
Nitro fields have since their inception?
