A few words from Wally Parks, President of the National Hot Rod Association.

In a word, the trouble with drag racing is inflation. Don Prudhomme, perhaps the most financially successful drag racer of all time, calls it "trading dollars," and everybody's a loser: the touring Funny Car star who now spends as much as $500,000 a year; the independent drag strip operator whose annual property tax bill exceeds $150,000; the young spectator whose two admission tickets flat knock the hell out of a 50-dollar bill, leaving just enough change for a couple of buck-fifty drag strip cheeseburgers.

Except in the generally profitable cases of national events produced directly by the American, International and National Hot Rod Associations, the bottom line of the world's quickest sport in the Eighties is fewer racers performing less frequently before fewer spectators.

For escalating costs and their consequences, the fans blame the promoters, who blame the racers, who blame the three national sanctioning bodies, who blame all the above, each other and bad weather. NHRA, in particular, seems to catch heck for all that ails drag racing. Even today, after 30 years of constant, sometimes personal criticism, NHRA founder-president Wally Parks still hasn't quite gotten used to it, but he does understand it.

Now, as in 1948, when as the editor of HOT ROD Magazine, he began publicly defending hot rodders, Mr. Parks tends to perceive any hot rodding controversy as a threat to us all, and certainly as counterproductive to his life's work. Better no publicity than controversial coverage, between 1948 and 1963, when Mr. Parks finally quit the publishing business to direct NHRA full-time, the dirty laundry was never displayed on these pages. Editor Parks always saw favorable editorial treatment as the obligation of the hot rod press, and in 1981 he's quick to tell a writer that he still sees it that way.

Perhaps exaggerating only slightly, an NHRA press staffer once remarked to a group of magazine reporters: "If Wally Parks had his way, a lot of you guys would never get into our events."

We're happy to report that NHRA still lets us in, puts up with us, and even honors personal interview requests with its famous president. It may surprise some of his critics to learn that Wally Parks arrives for such meetings not in a chauffered limousine, but in the yellow 1965 Chevy El Camino that he purchased for $600 several years ago.

Since rebuilt, this Ak Miller-turbocharged 305 'Camino is a real creampuff today, make no mistake about it, and Mrs. Parks is driving a '74 Oldsmobile; but we saw little evidence of the billions of dollars this man has been accused of accumulating at drag racing's expense, and we encountered no resistance to discussing a whole boatload of sensitive subjects -- begining with the extremely high cost of professional drag racing.

HOT ROD:  Raymond Beadle, your organization's current Winston World Champion, says he spent between $400,000 and $500,000 on his Funny Car operation last season. Several other top NHRA professionals went through a quarter-million dollars or more. Why haven't NHRA purse awards kept pace with such expenses?

"I think for a sport that was created -- and is still maintained -- as a place to go out and do something that you like to do, anybody who puts that kind of money into it and expects to get it back out is crazy. We've always felt that way.

"There's no way we can put a leash on how much money an individual can spend on his car, of course. In the last few years, it appears as if some of the racers are having a big contest to see who can spend the most money and come up with the most pretentious rig and equipment. We have increased purses probably on a scale of 10 percent a year, and we never pretended that the purses were going to be a source of professional, ensured income.

"I've always felt that the thing was way out of reason costwise, as far as participants were concerned. I've never been able to understand how so many can continue to come back, knowing that the rewards are as limited as they are. Yet I do know that most of them will sacrifice almost anything to remain part of it, so everything just keeps on going.

"In the very beginning, there wasn't a lot of expensive equipment to buy. Most had to improvise or manufacture their parts and equipment, and they could afford to go out and run every weekend. They weren't breaking a lot of parts, and they weren't paying a lot for them in the first place. But you look at the cost of just nitromethane alone today [$18 per gallon] and parts replacement -- without considering the cost of lodging, food, travel, maintaining a crew and all that -- and it's startling.

"On the computer in there we've got a breakdown on what every one of the racers has won during the year, and if you look at that, forget it! The total amount that's paid out is a lot of money -- something like $5,000,000 at our races alone -- but by the time you stretch the thing out, with so many people sharing in it, it isn't there.

"The only way that they can realistically be successful in professional racing today is to have a big-money sponsor who's willing to pay the bills. You can't hope to come out in drag racing -- or any other form of auto racing today -- on the basis of what your winnings may or may not be. Sponsorship is the key to it."

HOT ROD:  Just before he went out of business at Orange County International Raceway last summer, promoter Bill Doner told us that his biggest competition came from the national events produced by his own sanctioning body. Other NHRA track operators are also critical of NHRA's continual addition of major events which draw cars away from their own markets on prime summer weekends.

"I think that's true anytime anybody adds a major race that's going to draw a big field of professional cars. A good example of that is Bill Doner producing 64 Funny Cars up in Seattle, which killed the attraction to our event in Montreal -- he had 'em all booked in there, he paid the money, went way overboard on the thing. He probably contributed more to the escalation of booking fees than any other operator, then got caught in his own trap.

"It doesn't matter if it's us adding another event or AHRA adding an event -- at Salt Lake City, and Boise, and Portland. If they pay enough money, the cars are gonna go there; and if they go there, they can't be someplace else as well. There aren't enough stars to go around; that's what the problem is today. Everybody's trying to buy the same stars.

"I don't think there's ever been a time that track operators haven't had to work hard to maintain, but one thing they used to have is a giant field of cars coming in and running, and they didn't expect any appearance money -- all they wanted to do was race. If they got a trophy, that was fine. Later, if they won a little bit of money, that helped pay their gas expense to get there. But it's a different world now, an expensive world that we've helped create by getting involved in the business of promoting races and creating stars.

"We have a situation right now where it's very difficult for an independent track operator to be able to afford a reasonably sized field of professional racers. The primary reason is that the racers are just gradually pricing themselves right out of business. But I don't know of any way you can put a handle on the cost of any individual's operation in any kind of racing.

"Tracks blame us for the high cost of professional racers, yet since back in the early Sixties, we're the ones who used to try to preach against coming in and putting up too much in monetary awards; because we'll blow this thing out the door and become too expensive for anybody, especially the racers, to afford. We have to this day never paid our first appearance money or guarantees at our major events.

"We've built the Pro Comp category for the day when Funny Car and Top Fuel racers maybe priced themselves out of existence. If we don't have them anymore, what do we plug in? So it's there, it's ready, it's waiting to be plugged in. You know, if they keep on boosting up their costs higher and higher, there's gonna be fewer and fewer of them who can afford it."

HOT ROD:  Would you prefer to let that continue to happen rather than begin paying appearance money for your national events, as AHRA and IHRA have done?

"No, I wouldn't say that. But I don't see us getting to a place where just because this guy's name is Don Garlits, that you pay him appearance money to be at the race; that is not a fair way to do it. He might not even qualify, and then what do you have?

"I don't see us paying individuals because of their prominence, at the expense of the others. But I can see, down the road, rather than the season's-end bonus distribution system, some kind of arrangement based on how the racers ended up [in the points tandings].

"But I think that depends on whether they're running exclusively with us or whether they're not -- these two have to go together. Once you start paying a guy before he shows up, you better be sure he's your guy. I think in time it probably will be forced on us to go the route NASCAR has and USAC has, and that's exclusive. If you're one of our racers, you're one of our racers. If you're not, bye-bye. And I can assure you that when some of these people start running at races where there's no coverage, no television, no real quality exposure, sponsorships will be harder to get.

"I think it's entirely possible that in time, we'll find certain of the pro racers -- which we have created, really, through our publicity and TV exposure and sponsorship program -- who will probably discontinue running with NHRA. We're ready to accept that. I can't feel that the sport's going to stand or fall on whether a few of the big stars that we know today continue to run. I think the sport is much bigger than that.

HOT ROD:  Lately NHRA seems to be under fire from several different directions: track operators, professional racers, sportsman racers, rival sanctioning organizations. Does it seem that way to you?

"One of the biggest problems that NHRA has in its operating capacity is the fact that it's trying to be the representative of and the spokesman for the racer, who is a member of the association, for the track operator, who is very vital to this picture; for the industry, who are the sponsors and manufacturers of high-performance and safety equipment; we try to look after the best interests of the media, because we need them and we're trying to look out for ourselves, as well, to maintain a sport here that's a beneficial thing, and accepted as far as the public is concerned. So we end up wearing five or six different hats, many of which are in conflict with one another, and there's nothing easy about it.

"It would be very easy to just back off and say, 'We don't need all that; we're gonna go the route of other individuals and just promote our own races, and let the rest swim for themselves.' But you can't do that.

"I think that we're in a position -- and have always been in a position, since NHRA started to grow -- where we're blamed and criticized for almost anything we do. Once you accept the fact that that's the way it's going to be, why then you just go ahead and try to make the best judgements and do the things that are the most beneficial overall.

"If you try to operate an organization in a manner that is going to avoid criticism, or anybody's dissatisfaction, then you can't do anything. We realize that if we went the other route, and took on a handful of race cars and went out and promoted a limited number of events for ourselves, and that's all we did, everything else down there would eventually go away. It has to be coordinated and organized and protected."

Coordination, organization and protection will not come any easier in the Eighties and beyond, but Wally Parks believes that the National Hot Rod Association will continue to prevail -- with or without Wally Parks. More about that next month, when HOT ROD examines the quarter-mile sportsman scene in: Part 3: The Trouble With Drag Racing.