WOOD: Shifting Sport Compact Winds

[Shiba-Kun]

WOOD: Shifting Sport Compact Winds

Written by: Bill Wood

Los Angeles, Calif. – 1/10/2006 The IHRA has announced it will test the water on including turbo cars in its Pro Stock class in 2007. (IHRA photo)

Mondays are strange for a host of reasons and last Monday was no different. I got excited when I received an IHRA release that said the sanctioning body would be using 2006 to study the inclusion of “small cubic inch turbocharged entries into what is a very competitive Mountain Motor Pro Stock program.” In short, it appeared a soft spot was developing where sport compact drag racers could fall as the sport goes through some drastic revisions. But, as you see, I was jumping to some very wrong conclusions!

Depending on whom you talk with, sport compact drag racing is at a crossroads or a dead end. Certainly, what you see in the upcoming 2006 season will be radically different from what you saw in 2005, and forget the dreams that were floated during the 2000 through 2003 seasons. That sport doesn’t exist anymore, and gone along with it are the pioneering midwives who gave it birth.

For example, pioneer FWD racer Steph Papadakis is drifting instead of drag racing this year and his sponsor, AEM, reportedly has handed Steph’s Honda to Ara Arslanian, who won titles in Toyota Solaras for three years! You’ll definitely need a new program to follow any sport compact drag races that happen this year.

You’ll also need a bit of background to see just how much change is blowing in on the turbocharged sport compact winds.

Last month the people at NOPI, one of two major sport compact sanctioning organizations (the NHRA being the other), published rules for a Pro Compact class that essentially allowed old Pro Mod motors into what’s been a sport compact category. The rules allowed up to 530 cubic inch eight cylinder engines! (480 cubic inches if it’s turbocharged) Any commercially available cylinder head will be allowed. Any carburetor or fuel injection will be allowed as well as turbos and nitrous oxide. Big block turbocharged cars on gas can be as light as 2700 pounds.

Without getting into a lot of technicalities here, such a car should be capable of the very low six-second category in the quarter-mile, or about what the Pro Mod cars are did in the NHRA and IHRA last year. One racer Monday afternoon called it a new Outlaw class after a season in which three or four Pro RWD cars would show up for some NOPI and NHRA race weekends last summer. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

After I received the release, a couple phone calls had me talking with IHRA Director of Competition and Technical Services Mike Baker, who said he needs commitments and “we’ve got to get people to decide if they want to do it. It’s a pretty small market.” That’s especially true when you realize the IHRA national championship includes races from Canada to North Carolina.

Now, understand that the rules stated above were for the NOPI series and Baker only speaks for the IHRA.

“We look at it from the standpoint of being an entertainment company. How can we generate a wider customer base and how can we put these things out there? There’s not that many cars out there across the country.”

That could be a main issue in this entire debate. A debate, I might add, that was had after the 2002 season, when V8s were banned from the NHRA Sport Compact series because, it was felt, they didn’t reflect the true spirit of sport compact racing. In fact the ’02 season only had two full-time teams running V8 programs, one being Matt Scranton, who won the category in a very fast Toyota.

Cont.

[Shiba-Kun]

“I’m always trying to figure out the best way to bring my sponsors return on investment. That (the IHRA) would be a new arena for us to race in. Some of those guys really have their act together and we’re not quite up to the level of consistency they are. It’s kind of like shooting pool or golfing. You go out and play with people who are better than you, they’re going to make you step your game up and work harder.”

The IHRA started thinking of turbocharged cars in Pro Stock last year. The Monday release, in fact, was to announce a one-year delay in the program that could have started in 2006. Baker, however, was adamant that more data was needed before any new rules could be written.

The IHRA scheduled exhibition runs last fall at its Rockingham event. Scranton and his turbo Toyota Celica and Matt Hartford in his turbo Chevy Cavalier were invited and planned on being there but couldn’t show when a three-week rain delay moved the event to the same weekend as the NHRA’s Sport Compact Nitto World Finals in Pomona.

Scranton and Hartford told me they think this is a natural progression of things but “I don’t think it will happen,” Hartford told me in a separate conversation. Then he hit me with, “I think anything to do with sport compact, if it isn’t dying off, it’s pretty damn close. I’m not going sport compact racing this year. Why race for four grand!”

The rubber meets the road!
Toyota has supported Matt Scranton and might not be upset if Scranton took his Toyota effort to an IHRA crowd in the near future. (Bill Wood photo)

I’ve suggested Scranton’s championship pedigree already. Hartford’s includes a 2002 NHRA Summit Modified class title and world ET and mph records for sport compact drag racing in 2001. These are championship level professional racers.

“I spent $790,000 to go to 18 events last year. The most I could win was $25,000 to win the championship and four grand a race. That’s $65,000 total purse. You win one event in Pro Stock and you win $50,000!

“I’m putting my Sport Compact equipment up for sale and I’m willing to sell it turnkey to anyone who wants to continue doing it. I just want to pursue some other avenues for a change.” He says he’ll be teamed with someone at the Winternationals “in a 500 inch car.” That’s POWERade Pro Stock for the uninitiated.

“Wake up and smell the coffee. I spent four years with Summit (the mail order racing equipment company that sponsored his Cavalier) and I loved it to death. But I had to come out of my pocket to subsidize the program because I needed to honor my contracts.”

Leaving room for frustration and venting, it’s still important when a championship winner and contender says he’s leaving because he can’t make money and no one’s willing to step to the plate and help, championship or no championship.

“I know it sounds negative but it’s positive. It’s just moving in a different direction.”

“We don’t want to see the turbos and things of that nature go away because of the novelty of it,” said Scranton who gets help from TRD and Toyota. He said fans are pretty impressed when the Sport Compact cars make exhibition runs at NHRA POWERade events, as they have for the past two years. “They’re pretty impressed with what we can do with a production-based engine. They can relate to what we’re doing.”

Scranton says the only hope for sport compact drag racing is for a merger between NOPI and the NHRA. “But that’s only in a perfect world.”

That leaves the IHRA program. Will it happen? There’s resistance from the IHRA Pro Stock racers, especially from the camps that have considerable infrastructure building and supporting 800-inch Mountain Motor race engines for six figures a year. A turbocharged sport compact engine might run alongside the Mountain Motor cars for a third of that.

“My main goal is to come up with a set of rules and guidelines that we can start the season with that (are) fair for both the Mountain Motor and the turbo cars,” Baker said. “No body wants to be bothered continually with rule changes. We don’t want to turn the whole class upside down. We just want to widen our customer base sitting in the crowd. We’d like to get the demographic market of the turbo cars along with the people who follow the Mountain Motor cars.”

I’ve had conversations with IHRA Pro Mod regulars who agree and believe the turbo programs of sport compact are – or should be – drag racing’s future. Names like Shannon Jenkins and Harold Martin – two drivers who’ve won with fuel injected Nitrous programs in Pro Mod – know the potential of sport compact turbo performance and sport compact demographics. But will the merger happen in IHRA Pro Mod or Pro Stock? At least the IHRA people are willing to give it a year on the flagpole to see who salutes.

Curiously, going back to my Monday mysteries, I also received a release from an NHRA Top Fuel camp that said Marty Ladwig, who set record after record racing a Hot Rod and Pro FWD GM car for the last three years, is stepping out on his own to race in the 2006 NHRA Xplode Sport Compact series. Ladwig won two Hot Rod titles in a Pontiac Sunbird before switching to a Pro FWD Chevy Cobalt last year, splitting time between NOPI and the NHRA while he developed the new Cobalt.

He goes into 2006 with a Roush Industries-built, GM-supported, Marty Ladwig Racing Cobalt, a car that won three times last year becoming the “first and only FWD racer” to record a speed of more than 200 mph and make a 7.12 pass in he process, quickest in NHRA Sport Compact history.

Ladwig is casting his fate with the Sport Compact winds. For now. I wonder who else will follow, IHRA or otherwise?

Mondays are weird!

[VTECsqznN2O]

interesting...good read

[98civcEK]

interesting.....

i wish that there would be some way more people could get involved, but it just costs too much money to maintain and travel. like the guy said.