Where do we go from here? Drag racing ten years from now?

Time after time we in the industry talk about trends and what we would like to see, what we are seeing, and what we believe we will see down the road. So let’s take a dive into what we think drag racing will look like a decade from now, at least in my opinion.

For more than 30 years I have been around the sport of drag racing. I have seen organizations like NMCA, NMRA, FFW, and others come and unfortunately go. I have seen certain classes or types of cars reach huge heights of popularity, and then come crashing down to obscurity, before experiencing a complete rebirth. A class like Outlaw 10.5 which at one point not long ago was really on death’s doorstep, only to be revived in a sense within the PDRA organization.

We’ve all seen some of our favorite race tracks close their doors over that same time period. Whether it be PBIR, Memphis, Atlanta, Houston, Englishtown, Atco, Joliet, etc. While some have reopened or in the process of maybe gaining new life, some have turned into storage for insurance companies, or even been developed into other things.

Drag racing has and always will be a cyclical sport with its many ups and downs. It might be classes, it might be tracks, it might be promoters, it might be businesses, and it certainly is racers and fans. So where exactly does that leave the future for a lot of us within this industry that aren’t getting any younger?

If you look at some of the best and most well respected promoters that put on large events in the industry you will see a lot of promoters that I don’t imagine plan on still doing this ten years from now. Look at Donald Long, Monty Mikho, Mike Hill, Ellen Eschenbacher, Tom Bailey, Wes Buck, etc. Do you think that all or any of them will still be putting on events in ten years? I certainly don’t think so. It’s not like any of those that I listed are spring chickens, including myself, so do these promoters still have the energy to do this stuff when they are in their 60’s? If not, what are we going to do about that?

We don’t see a lot of twenty somethings going out there and leasing or buying racetracks. There are exceptions to this though, and there is a young crop of people coming into the industry and making an impact. Folks like Tyler Crossnoe, Victor Alvarez, Wes and Kristin Clapp, Amy and Steven Farrow, along with some others. The question is…will this be enough?

Owning a drag strip is not something that you do to become rich, in fact it’s what you do if you hate having money but love the sport, love cars, love being yelled at and screamed at, love not getting sleep, hate the weather forecaster, and all the other angst that goes into it. You truly have to love this sport to do what these people do!

I absolutely believe that we will still have a strong drag racing community ten years from now, but I think there are changes that need to be made to help it grow into the future. It really comes from the top down and that starts with NHRA. Obviously my relationship with NHRA has been contentious to put it mildly over the last decade. The fact that we as a media outlet have been what appears to the equivalent of an SMU “Death Penalty” for not agreeing with everything that the NHRA does, says, or implements, is a huge issue within the sport. It is showing to everyone, including other potential content creators that you either treat them like CNN treated Joe Biden, or you get the boot.

We as an industry need to welcome the changing formats of how our sport is covered and how it reaches the masses. Embracing social media outlets, as well as nontraditional journalistic reporters and approaches. Embracing the role that places like Facebook, IG, X, TikTok, and Youtube have within the entire industry. This isn’t the 80’s anymore and we need to do a much better job at reaching the masses.

This next part I am going to bang my head on a wall in the process of saying it, but I also realize it very much needed, and that is that we need to create a class or classes that revolve around the EV movement. Drag racing is one of the only motorsports that I can think of that has not embraced EV in anyway shape or form. While I might despise EV’s, I understand that my opinion regarding them doesn’t matter. Not my cup of tea, but it very well might be a way to experience some continued growth as well as getting even more people interested in drag racing.

Something else that we as a drag racing community absolutely must strive towards is a touchy subject. I have watched thousands of junior dragsters run over the course of my career and there is something that has been glaringly obvious to me. When girls age out of juniors there are far fewer of them making a transition into a big car or dragster. Yes, I’m aware that the split between boys and girls in juniors is most like about an 80/20 split, but how do we as an industry keep girls interested in continuing with motorsports into their 20’s and beyond?

If you really want to stoke the flames of conversation with tracks operators we can start discussing the costs of admission for fans as well. A test and tune day for a fan at a local drag strip should not cost $40-$50 for he/she and a significant other and a teenage kid. As someone who has raced, who has crewed, who has attended, and who has covered plenty of races over my 30+ years, I have always believed that it’s more fun when the stands are full. We can go into the math of it all, but there’s no need, we all know that 100 spectators at $20 a head is not as good as 200 spectators at $10 a head. More eyes on the sport is better for all of us.

I certainly hope that I am wrong about so many things when I look back on this ten years from now. I hope that the NHRA has grown up and become the organization I believe it can be. I hope that radial racing is still strong as ever. I hope that drag and drive events are held all over the country and are thriving. I hope that women continue to make our sport grow and continue to show why they are just as good if not better than the men. I hope that we don’t see the destruction of racetracks for more insurance company parking lots and more subdivision building. I hope that younger people are more interested in learning how to and becoming able to run, own, operate, and become successful behind the scenes. Fact is that it will take all of us for to happen though. So let’s make sure that we are supporting tracks, supporting organizations, supporting promoters, supporting media, supporting companies, and continuing to grow the drag racing family together.