For Love or Money

Little guys vs. the professionals in drag racing

The dot in the center of the television screen explodes. The sports announcer's well-scrubbed face beams simultaneously into millions of living rooms, beer bars and prison recreation rooms across the nation.

"Hiya, fans. Welcome to this Saturday's 'Wunnerful World of Sports.' You try not to notice the announcer's eye movements as he struggles to keep up with the cue cards being flashed before him. Perhaps it's just a tic. "Have we got some events for you! From Juarez, the bear-baiting championships. From Altoona, the buffalo chip throwing competition." You brace yourself. After three postponements in seventeen weeks, they're finally going to broadcast the show. "And from Pomona, exclusive coverage of the Winternational drag races."

A sigh. It's finally on the air. But somehow, between the feminine hygiene commercials and coverage of the buffalo chip throwing eliminations, you see about 32 seconds of racing. And it's dull. The cars that made the earth shudder and your pulse quicken at the races look like your kid brother's slot cars as they silently race across the 21-inch Magnavox.

Perhaps two-thirds of the event coverage is consumed by the color man explaining the differences between kinds of cars. Fuelers become "long skinny ones," while Pro Stockers are "modified, street-type cars." He doesn't even try to figure out the Funnies. The rest of the time is devoted to the announcer mispronouncing your current idol's name. You can tell by the way he involuntarily clenches his fist that he inwardly wishes he had pulled a cushy assignment like the Juarez bear-baiting.

Throughout the enire program there is no mention of your pal who towed 2789 miles through weather that made Napoleon's retreat from Moscow look balmy. It was sort of neat, though, how your friend won his eliminator (and $10,000, give or take a little) with an 18-year old car. Not being a "professional," though, he wasn't mentioned.

Although the foregoing may not be a totally accurate picture of drag racing's presentation to national audiences, it does point out a central conflict in our sport. Professional racers would have you believe that sportsman racers are killing the sport with their handicaps and classes. And amateurs are just as insistent that emphasis on the professional classes will destroy "little guy" racing. It's a controversy which has come more sharply into focus with the establishment of the National Challenge and Supernationals as pro-only events.

The current contention is that big time drag racing needs Big Money. After all, if people are paid $100,000 to knock a ball around with a stick, then surely a person driving a 230 mph race car deserves more than the comparatively small change which most races offer. The $25,000 cash prizes (plus another $10,000 in contingencies) at Tulsa in 1972 were intended to prove that drag racing could generate a high dollar show. Secondly, according to this line of thinking, drag racing must be packaged. The sporting public -- however it is defined -- must be able to grasp drag racing as easily as it recognizes a box of frozen lima beans. This means eliminating confusion -- the confusion of handicap starts, breakouts and factored records. Of course, this also means eliminating all the sportsman racers.

Some fuel racers would be overjoyed to see them leave. The analogies are endless: "You don't see soapbox derby cars in the Indy 500." "It's like breaking up a major league double-header with a Little League game." The stockers are blamed for everything from befouling the starting lines to cluttering the pits.

The most fashionable idea being promoted lately is that drag racing needs a format like professional golf. It's claimed that the combination of top stars, simple rules and big sponsorships (country clubs, hotels, airlines, etc.) makes it easy for the stick-and-ball games to get wide media coverage. Conversely, wide media coverage is said to make it easier to get big sponsorships, bigger stars and all the rest. It sounds a little like the familiar theme, "The rich get richer..."

But using golf (or tennis or even jai alai) as a model for drag racing's potential growth may be misleading. Golf, tennis and the like are "polite" sports. The image is of well-manicured gentlemen on grassy vales. These pastimes are well-suited to television coverage because little happens. When a player is making a crucial putt, the galleries are hushed, and the cameraman has only to follow a white ball on its 40-foot path to a cup. Drag racing lacks this gentility. There isn't a camera or mike made that can capture the searing wail of a blown hemi.

Clearly, though, other forms of motorsports have overcome this handicap. The purses offered in NASCAR, Can-Am and USAC events make the cash that can be won at national drag meets look like so much pin money. Successful racers in these organizations have become folk heroes, cashing in on their popularity with endorsements of everything from hair cream to sunglasses.

Certainly some types of racing are a part of our cultural heritage -- it would be impossible to conceive of the South without Grand National stockers or the Midwest without championship cars. New forms of racing like the Can-Am and Formula 5000 series have benefitted from patron sponsors. With giant corporations lending their prestige -- and their promotional dollars -- circle track and road racing have found their Daddy Warbucks. The paradox is that drag racing has greater participation and larger spectator turnouts than these types of racing -- but still many of its "professionals" go hungry.

It may be that drag racing's strengths are also its liabilities. Any area that has an unused bean field can have a drag strap. This encourages thousands of racers to participate in every conceivable kind of car. Drag racing has become a broad-based sport, but its aura of glory has diminished. Pop mythology has it that the Pettys and Andrettis are supermen, but is quick to dismiss drag drivers as refugees from an Annette Funicello movie.

The facilities which have tried to provide a showcase for drag racing are, generally speaking, not making it. Strips with elaborate grandstands, air conditioned VIP accomodations, chippy hostesses and all the trappings of a super speedway haven't generated the revenue from drag racing to offset their expenses. But more modest tracks which cater to the gritty nature of racing are staying afloat. Now the problems of the so-called Super Tracks may be due to poor management and promotion; then again, they may be the result of the very nature of drag racing.

Some heretics might even assert that drag racing is better off if it shuns "professionalism" and all it entails. And the heretics have some strong arguments. Suppose that Big Money suddenly descended on drag racing; what might be the consequences? Purses would undoubtedly increase -- but so would the cost of racing. Racers complain that a basic fuel motor now costs over $6000. But $6000 would barely buy the sparkplugs in some kinds of racing. Similarly, prices for a competitive Pro Stocker hover around $25,000, while a comprehensive Indy car effort can absorb a quarter of a million dollars. If Big Money does come to drag racing, racers may find themselves in the uncomfortable position of spending more but winning less.

Secondly, there's the problem of determining who the professionals of drag racing really are. Top Fuel and Funny Car drivers were predominant in the formation of the Professional Racers Association last year, but ever since the '70 Gatornationals it has been the Pro Stockers which have commanded the crowds' cheers. The argument for the exclusion of the sportsman racers has always been that there are too many winners, but even Garlits concedes that, with a Tulsa format, "We've still got three classes with three different winners." No golf tournament or Super Bowl ever had that many champions. If drag racing is to professionalize, then it must be resolved who will be THE winner of an event. Once could make a case for Top Fuel, Funny Car or Pro Stock as the true professional class -- and what about the rocket cars which are the quickest and fastest of them all?

Finally, many "amateurs" do better financially than so-called professionals. Quite a few Top Fuel teams would be thankful to net as much as "little guys" like Paul Blevins and Scott Shafiroff did in 1972. The definition of a professional also changes from one area of the country to another: in the Northeast, Super Stock shows are as popular as Top Fuelers. And in the South, a Modified meet may outdraw a Funny Car spectacular.

Jettisoning the sportsmen could have serious consequences for the sport. The bulk of the purses are provided by companies which post contingency awards. Up until last year, it wasn't unusual for a Modified Eliminator winner to take home more money than a Funny Car champion. After all, most Modified cars use shifters, shocks, batteries and all the other accessories which are applicable to a street car. Some companies have to be pushed to post awards for the unlimited classes; the parts on a Top Fueler have little relationship to anything that many manufacturers could reasonably expect to sell on a mass scale. And many companies which would like to participate in awards programs would be shut out of a pro-only race because their products weren't applicable. Shunning the companies which have helped drag racing in the past is no way to help the sport grow.

All-pro racing is likely to change the character of our sport. The two major pro events already held give an indication of what to expect: The spectators at Tulsa were treated to an afternoon of watching the grease-sweep trucks cleaning the oiled-down track, while the Supernationals afforded between-rounds employment for every circus act this side of Ringling Bros. Sportsman classes have traditionally been used as "fillers," but certainly for a sizeable number of spectators these fillers are actually the main attraction.

Finally, there's a delicate line between exposure of the sport and exploitation of it. Professional football has flowered with the advent of television coverage, but roller derbys and wrestling have become low comedy under TV's glaring eye. Racing has been treated shabbily by the mass media in the past; tales of death and destruction are more likely to make the sports pages than the results of the Nationals. The same programs which have featured drag racing segments also highlight destruction derbys and ice dancing. No one would suggest that the latter two are anything like major sports. It would be a terrible mistake to slight sportsman racing in order to lure more coverage on the level of wrist wrestling from Petaluma. During the past four years the amount of drag racing's television time has not increased substantially. Nor is there any indication that the network nabobs are about to show any more interest. The hope that drag racing can become a major sport through increased exposure may be founded on a cruel myth.

Up to now, the split between amateurs and professionals hasn't truly damaged the sport. Grumblings about the all-pro formats have quieted; denunciations of "Little League" racing have stopped appearing in the national press. But with the rich summer meets rapidly approaching, the debate will be renewed. Other types of racing have managed to separate their elite corps of professionals from the farm system of amateur and club racing -- can drag racing make the same change? More importantly, should it? Whether the subject is sex or racing, their remains one fundamental difference between the amateur and the professional; one does for love what the other does for money.

written by Rick Voegelin from Car Craft magazine page 42-43; 88; 114-116 - August, 1973 © Petersen Publishing Co. Ltd. 1973