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Tue, July 22nd 2008
Only 10 points. Half-a-round of racing. Not much, is it?
It must seem like a million miles to Morgan. He has been flirting with the top ten all season. A round win here, a couple there, and the top ten remains just out of his reach. He has four more races to get into the Countdown to 1 and then he’ll either have as good a shot at the championship as the other nine racers in the playoffs, or—for the second year in a row—he’ll be racing for pride to finish out the season.
And pride isn’t what guys like Morgan race for.
Neither does J.R., and his outlook for making the Countdown to 1 is even more discouraging than it is for Morgan. He’s 103 points behind Doug Kalitta after his rough weekend in Seattle and that means he’ll have to pick up over two rounds of racing on Doug at each of the next four events. Not a very pretty picture.
I was just looking at the Round-By-Round stats on the NHRA’s Online Media Center and I was stunned by how many round losses Morgan has suffered this year which could have just as easily been round wins—and therefore giving him more than enough points to be safely in the top ten.
A few hundredths of a second difference at the finish line in at least ten matchups could have gone in his favor and added another 20 points to his total, but….oh well…..
Is there any good news? (This is beginning to sound like a Geico commercial….)
Well, the NHRA has taken some major steps in moving the safety of the sport in a favorable direction. A new task force has been assembled—something which has never been done before—to address safety issues and make recommendations. The fact that both NHRA officials and racers themselves are being included in this high-powered group is a significant step forward. Shortening the track to 1000 feet has received mixed reviews, but it’s my firm belief that it’s only an interim measure and once other areas of making the tracks and the cars more compatible with the speeds they’re traveling have been worked out, we’ll be back racing on a quarter-mile permanently.
I had the pleasure of being interviewed Monday morning by the guys at SPEED TV Australia, a radio show which is heard by some 400,000 motorsports fans across the Island Continent. There is a great deal of interest and curiosity in Australia directed at the NHRA and, as you probably know, our American racers have been traveling Down Under for a long time competing in match races and exhibition events at several tracks around Australia’s major cities.
The three hosts of the show, Steve, Brett, and Nate, were very knowledgeable and knew their drag racing. They asked about the new NHRA safety measures, the crunch in the supply of nitromethane and its recent skyrocketing cost, the phenomenal year Tim Wilkerson is having, and the latest results from Seattle. Last year, as part of the TV team that covered the Champ Car World Series, I got to travel to Australia for the first time and it was a trip I’ll always remember.