Drag Illustrated Issue 111, July 2016 | Page 104

keep things fair, but there needs to be a larger safety aspect of it. Turbo cars are fixing to be in the 3.70s, and running at 3,100 pounds; well, it just doesn’t get any ‘unsafer’ than that,” he asserts. “I look at driver safety. I don’t listen to the ones complaining about who’s getting ahead.” The incentive to run quicker and faster isn’t purely based solely on pride and bragging rights, either. There’s big money at stake. “Based on what these guys used to get paid for the amount of effort they put in, it was obscene. With 100 cars in a drag radial field and paying out $2,500 to win with a $200 tech card, well, there’s something significantly wrong with that,” Sears points out. Promoters such as Long are now offering huge cash payouts upwards of $60,000 to the winner of Radial vs the World and similar classes. He remains concerned, however, that Radial vs the World could eve