Yahoo Autos All is Not Well: NHRA Top Fuel Racer Issues Dire Warning About Series' Future
NHRA Mello Yello Series Top Fuel owner-driver Doug Foley qualified in the top half of the 66th Denso NHRA U.S. Nationals lineup and sixth at the Indy Dodge event just before that—impressive for a part-time team with not one full-time crew member.
While Foley, 56, is is proud of that, he’s anything but proud of the way drag racing is headed. Truth is, he was concerned about his sport even before the pandemic hit. His forecast is partly cloudy at best for the NHRA, unless series leaders address a handful of issues.
“Maybe they'll have nine full-time cars next year, but it will be single digits of how many full-time dragsters there are running the tour next year,” Foley said. “I predict there will be about six races next year that will have 11 or less Top Fuel cars next year. That's the beginning of the end. As soon as you've done that, you basically put the 'CLOSED' sign up.
"As soon as you prove to the world we don't have enough cars, we're screwed, just telling the world, ‘Hey, listen, we're now a little mom-and-pop organization. We're more of a car club than we are a national sanctioning body.’ So we have to do everything we can in our power to prevent that from happening.”
