Wally Parks gave the post-war car culture a legitimate place to race its hot rods. Don Prudhomme gave drag racing its swagger, its quintessential coolness. Kenny Bernstein elevated it from a sport to a business. John Force is ushering in a personalized era of safety-consciousness.
Perhaps Funny Car driver Ron Capps will be the voice of reason, or the quarterback, rallying the troops and calling for solidarity in the wake of HD Partners Acquisition’s Jan. 31 rejection of an NHRA purchase.
HD President/CEO/Board Chairman Eddy Hartenstein blamed the economy for a thumbs-down vote from his shareholders last Thursday.
The media’s recession-mongers have made it all too easy all of a sudden for tight or timid corporations to develop a vision and act on it. So it’s difficult to gauge the validity of Hartenstein’s claim that “unfortunately, in the time since we first announced this transaction in May of 2007, we have witnessed a dramatic shift in both the financial markets and the perceived strength of the U.S. economy, which we believe adversely impacted the final outcome of this transaction.”
Let HD Partners Acquisitions panic. Drivers who push the 336-mph barrier don’t panic. They know this sport has weathered everything to survive and thrive. But sometimes they complain and forget that they can accomplish more by sticking together.
“We can’t be imploding,” Capps said. “We have to come together and work together. If we start falling apart from inside, it’s going to do nothing but go downhill. We don’t want to be like CART and IRL.”
He said a mouthful there. More than 30 years of bickering in the open-wheel ranks has either disgusted or bored millions of fans, stripped the shine from the once-magical Indianapolis 500, and submerged the incredible skill and grit and ambition of those drivers beneath a surface of egotistical twaddle.
Capps is right. Racers “need to stick together and keep showing that we have a great product. Even with the economy being bad and a war going on, we still have a great show. Yeah, we need a little improvement, but I feel good about where we’re at.”
He said he feels disappointed about two things. One is that Parks had approved of the NHRA sale to HD Partners Acquisitions. Knowing Parks, he probably liked Hartenstein because the former Cal Poly Pomona aerospace-engineering major had a passion for drag racing.
The other regret, he said, was that Hartenstein knew how to increase the revenue sources. He has relationships with CEOs of mega-popular consumer outlets who might have become drag-racing enthusiasts. But Hartenstein couldn’t rally the shareholders to become excited about marketing opportunities in the sport.
Even with i-Pods and all the latest technology that Hartenstein’s pals promote, they couldn’t make the connection between drag-racing demographics and dynamics — young, hip, extreme, risk-taking, sensory spectacle — and sales. With a twist on the “Win on Sunday - Buy on Monday” phrase (and an apology to originator Bob Tasca, Sr.), the “See on Sunday - Buy on Monday” synapses weren’t transmitting.
And this is the group that positions itself as the world’s premier drag-racing organization. The collapse of the HD deal was grim news, after Brut left the sport, Torco pulled its sponsorship of more than a dozen NHRA and IHRA teams, Prestone-Autolite dropped longtime associate Bob Gilbertson in both NHRA and IHRA competition, and Prudhomme’s and Del Worsham’s teams each had to jettison a Funny Car because of funding concerns.
Capps’ boss, Don Schumacher, said, “I don’t think anything has changed in the way we’ve done business since the announcement of the HD Partners agreement in May to now.”
He’s right, except for one intangible: hope. Racers and fans had hoped HD Partners Acquisitons shareholders would approve the sale, opening the door to fresh ideas and fresh funding.  
Sanctioning-body President Tom Compton pledged that “NHRA is in the best financial position in its history and prospects for future growth are at an all-time high. It is the health of the company [and] the sport and strong future prospects that led HD Partners to pursue this transaction in the first place, and those elements still exist.”
The company press release said that “NHRA will continue to operate as it has in the past. NHRA worked closely with HD Partners the last several months to finalize the transaction. Given the time and energy spent on this effort, NHRA has no plans to pursue a similar opportunity in the near future. For now, NHRA will remain focused on the business and continued growth of NHRA.”
Said Capps, as much in wonderment as out of respect for Parks, “All these years, NHRA has operated as a non-profit organization. When they announced the sale agreement, we all kind of raised our eyebrows. Now, we have a price on our sport.”
Anybody want to own America’s quickest, fastest, most extreme, most unforgettable, most addicting sport?