D R AG ILLUS TR ATED RO UNDTA BL E
PHOTOS: JOHN DIBARTOLOMEO, DRAG ILLUSTRATED ARCHIVES
FOR RACERS, BY RACERS From sixty-foot times to
car counts, Kyle Seipel keeps track of everything when
he’s racing at NHRA national events or hosting the
Spring Fling races with co-promotor Peter Biondo.
The duo knows what racers want, and they deliver.
ent ways. I guess you could say it all started with
the advent of electronics back like 30 years ago,
bringing the delay box into our form of racing.
On a positive side, whether you’re talking about
technology in general, delay boxes, electronic
ignition, all of the technological advances that
our cars have, and then on down to the actual
competition, like LED bulbs and crosstalk and
auto-start, all of the stuff that makes it easier to
make good runs, that’s good because it’s created
so much parity. In reality, somebody could come
in off the street and basically buy a store-bought
combination and they could come out and be
competitive immediately. The downside to that
is we’ve driven the cost up so much that it’s an
elite group that can take advantage of that. Like
I said, I don’t know that you can necessarily turn
back the dial on that, but I think that’s the biggest
problem with our sport. It’s just too expensive.
MB: Cost is always the first thing that comes
to mind. With so many big money bracket races
going on right now, the market is going to weed
out some of those events based on what people
can afford. We’re actually pretty lucky right now.
Gas prices have come down in the last year or so.
We saw a tremendous spike at our November race
last year. That’s right about the time that the gas
prices dropped significantly. We had nice weather
and gas prices came down. We picked up like 50
or 60 cars in a single class. At some point racers
are going to have to pick and choose which races
they can go to, not only based on their budget, but
time away from home. There’s a ton of cost in the
time. Unless you’re retired or run your own business, like I’m fortunate enough to do, it’s pretty
difficult to put the time and money together to
do a lot of this. A lot of guys are going to hit a
few big money races a year. For some people it’s
going to be one a year. As long as we keep doing
our job and providing the best value that we can
for the racers and the sponsors both, we’ve seen
continued growth for years and years now.
KS: My dad has been racing for over 50 years
and he keeps great notes. In the early ‘80s, 1982
I think it was, he won a divisional in Sacramento
and with contingencies he won over $4,000. Now,
here we are 30 years later and that $4,000 is
more like $2,300-2,400. The expenses certainly
haven’t gone down; they’re probably double or
triple. So, that’s a big challenge – the potential for
profit is getting smaller and smaller. That said, I
think we will continue to see a lot of sportsman
racers that have typically been NHRA/IHRA
regulars show up at more bracket events because,
first and foremost, they’re having more fun and
getting more track time, but also because they
can make some money.
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June 2016
DragIllustrated.com
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