Some National Hot Rod Ass’n  nitro-class drivers wouldn’t give up their testing sessions for all the pollution in China.
Now they have to. China, the sole supplier of the nitromethane these 8,000-horsepower monsters gulp at 12 gallons per run, is making an Olympic effort to clean up for the Beijing Summer Games. The Chinese government has decided to limit/halt the production and shipment of nitro until late summer or fall.
That prompted the NHRA to call a moratorium on testing after national events. That policy will be in effect through the U.S. Nationals, the Labor Day classic, which will begin the Countdown to the Championship.
Normally, that would at least level the playing field and make every driver feel, as Top Fuel’s Doug Herbert said he did, that “everybody’s pretty much in the same boat.” But everybody isn’t, particularly the Funny Car competitors.
Complicating matters is last Thursday’s introduction of the new Goodyear D2550 rear slick that all Top Fuel and Funny Car teams must use by the mid-July Denver event.
That’s the same race at which all Funny Car teams must comply with the new car-safety specs that NHRA announced before the start of the season.
Fifteen nitro drivers, including three currently inactive, have tested with the new tire. And some Funny Car drivers have gotten a jump on using the newly mandated chassis.
The double-whammy for some lies in, as Funny Car’s Jack Beckman said, “the teams that were first in line at Murf McKinney’s to get the big-tube chassis got an enormous advantage. They got to go test and implement their new chassis at the races. The teams that got later numbers in line were kind of screwed.”
Tommy Johnson, Jr. tested the Kenny Bernstein-owned Monster Energy Dodge Charger at Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago, although not with the new D2550s underneath. And he has had limited racing time with the new chassis, but said, “I like the progress I’ve seen with this car.”
Boss Bernstein said, “The moratorium won’t help our team, but we have to conserve fuel and it’s a necessary mandate. It may, however, give a bigger advantage to the multi-car teams.”
Beckman, who drives the Valvoline/MTS Charger, said not in Don Schumacher Racing’s case.
“People say, ‘Well you’ve got three other cars to tune off of. You’d be the last people who should complain.’ But we run three different chassis. We just put a Johnny West tune-up in and we have to go run it.” Chicago was going to be his testing ground this weekend. “You don’t want to take a brand-new, untried chassis, even if it’s a carbon copy,” he said. “They have different personalities.”
Del Worsham, who tested the new tire, said he and crew chief, dad, Chuck Worsham are not overly concerned about it, and they had the new chassis issue under control at the start of the season.
Furthermore, they hadn’t planned to test their Checker Schuck’s Kragen Chevy Impala until August at Indianapolis, anyway. Now, he said, “We’re all in this together. Basically, it’s like spilled milk right now. The situation is what it is, so there’s no use crying about it. We can’t test, but no one else can either.”
Or can they?
“I’ve thought about going to another IHRA race to test,” frontrunner Tim Wilkerson said. “There is one in Maryland between (the) Joliet and Englishtown (races), but if I did that, my guys wouldn’t have a weekend off till September or something like that. I don’t know what we’re going to do yet. I’m trying to get NHRA to lift the moratorium on the new chassis for Denver. Or at least make some concessions, like letting us switch cars without throwing out the runs. I’ve only had my new chassis two weeks and I’d like to go run it somewhere. If we can’t get something worked out, we’ll just have to sneak off somewhere to test.”