Are Larry Morgan’s comments about the demise of NHRA Pro Stock racing greatly exaggerated?
 
Allen Johnson and Greg Anderson said they think so.
 
Morgan will revive his drag-racing career at next month’s Gatornationals as a 62-year-old rookie in the J&A Service Pro Modified Series driving Brad Anderson’s brand-new supercharged Chevy Camaro. He wasn’t denigrating the class when he said, “Even though I love it, it’s done. I don’t know how it can survive.”
 
The 19-time Pro Stock winner simply was viewing it through the filter of a less-than-robust economic pendulum swing in the industry. He saw it as a business sense, a simple dollars-and-cents issue, arguing that Pro Stock is more of an afterthought for the NHRA when it comes to television exposure. That, he said, translates to a sponsorship-procurement hardship.  
 
“I think it’s wonderful. I’ve done it my whole life. I’ve lived every day for this stuff,” Morgan said. “It costs a million and a half [dollars] to run Pro Stock, and they get maybe 25 percent of the [TV] exposure you get on a Pro Mod car. I’ve been working on a lot of sponsorship for the last year, and people turn their nose up at Pro Stock. So . . . you need to do the Pro Mod car. It only makes good business sense.”
 
Johnson, the 2012 champion, doesn’t buy Morgan’s claim that the class is dying.
 
“It’s dead for him, probably, because he don’t want to go through all this,” Johnson said referring to the undeniable struggle every team has experienced with the sanctioning body’s switch to new fuel and conversion from carburetors to electronic fuel injection (EFI). “And he quit building his own engines.
 
“But it’s not dead,” he said. “It’s got a core group of guys racing it that’s going to continue racing it and probably won’t change that.”
 
Four-time Pro Stock champion Greg Anderson is in Johnson’s camp, contradicting Morgan’s prediction.
 
“I don’t think he’s right. I really don’t think he’s right. I really don’t believe that,” Anderson said.
 
“Things do go through cycles, no question about that,” he said. “Chrysler has jumped out of it before, and they’ve come back in. Hopefully they’ll do the same thing again. Hopefully Ford will do the same thing again. Who knows what will transpire through the year that may make them say, ‘Hmmm . . . Maybe we need to get back in that game’? 
 
“We’re hoping that happens, because yes, I do think it has to happen for the sport, for the class to continue. But does it have to happen today? No, I don’t believe so. There’s still benefit to Chevrolet doing this. There’s still benefit for them. It’s still a great show for the fans to watch. It’s still side-by-side, door-handle-to-door-handle close racing. It still comes down to who leaves the starting line first. It’s still great racing, as far as the fans are concerned.
 
“As far as the Big Three, I don’t know what the answer is, but I wish we had ‘em all here,” he said, adding that he absolutely wishes the class would earn the attention of foreign automakers, too.
Anderson does agree with Morgan that sparking interest in the class throughout Corporate America can be tough.
 
“Pro Stock was never easy to sell,” Anderson said. “Even when we had the Big Three involved, it was never easy to sell.
 
“Why? I don’t know. Do they need to go a second faster? Do they need to go 100-miles-an-hour faster? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe that’s what they’re missing. I don’t know,” he said.
 
Morgan certainly noticed that something is missing for the fans when Pro Stock is involved. He said, “I think the fans are looking for [something] a little different. It’s hurtful when you’re getting ready to pull up and make a run and people are coming out of the stands. That means your eliminator’s almost ready to be eliminated.”
 
Johnson and Anderson wouldn’t go that far although Anderson did acknowledge a generational shift in attitude toward drag racing in general.
 
“People like extreme stuff these days. The young kids do. It’s not extreme, I guess. It’s a purist sport. It’s a fine-tuned purist class,” Anderson said. “Let’s be honest: the young kids these days, they could give a s--- less about that. They want the boom, the bang, the explosion, blood and guts, the extreme stuff.
 
“So I don’t know . . . I don’t know what it needs. I love it, and there’s plenty of people who love it. But yes, it’s probably going to have to change over the years, become, I guess, more extreme if we want to bring in a young crowd.”
 
Johnson wasn’t looking at big changes to the tech specs as a fix, at least not anytime soon.
 
“I think people would run ‘em out on a rail if they go changin’ stuff again, after all we’ve been through with this deal,” he said.
 
The NHRA has not even hinted that it intends to throw another wicked curveball at the Pro Stock class.
 
While Anderson is aware of what the younger crowd craves, he said he’s not particularly crazy about the blood-and-guts part of it. 
 
“It’s not exactly what a driver wants to do or go through. It’s expensive equipment. You don’t want to tear it up every time. It’s not Monster Trucks. You can’t afford to tear ‘em up every time down the track,” he said.
 
He said the EFI era ought to attract the younger, tech-savvy car enthusiast: “They work on the computers that run the fuel injection. So they should love it.”
 
Johnson also agreed with Morgan on one point.
 
Morgan said, “You have to admit that Pro Stock is like red-headed step-children now.”
 
“NHRA don’t give it its due, on TV or anywhere. It’s like they want it gone,” Johnson said. “But I’m not sure that’s the case.”     
 
Anderson can sympathize with the fans who think the rules changes have made the class less exciting. At the same time, he said he can see how the changes, if only gradually, will improve the class’ appeal.
 
“I’ve said it for years: I kind of wish the cars would be faster. And the only way they’re ever going to get faster is to have a bigger engine or some kind of a power-adder on the engine, I guess. I’m not saying I want that. But the deal with fuel injection is that it’s something that it seems like the mainstream wants and it’s more modern. But the fact is how we had to make this change over to fuel injection, with all the other changes, the cars are slower than they were last year,” he said.
 
“If I’m sitting in the grandstand, I don’t like that. I want them to be faster ever year,” Anderson said. “I just sat out in the grandstand here [at Pomona, Calif.] three months ago and watched Funny Car run 3.88 or whatever. I want to come back in February and watch ’em run 3.82 or something. That’s what you want – you want to see them run faster than they did the last time you watched ‘em.
 
“So I think we [the Pro Stock class]need to do the same thing. And we’re not doing that right now because of the rules change we had.
 
“When you make a change – and I argued this when they announced the change –  it’s going to make the cars slower,” he said, showing his annoyance at the NHRA’s resistance. “And their argument was ‘That doesn’t matter.’ ”
 
He said, “matter” with an emphatic hint of resentment and disgust.
 
“And I feel it does. I really feel it does. I can’t change ’em, but I feel it does matter,” Anderson said. “If I’m a guy sitting in the grandstand, I want to see the cars faster than the last time I watched ‘em. I remember – it’s not that long ago. I remember sitting in the grandstand and watching this guy or this guy run whatever he ran – 3.88 or whatever – and now I come back here and he’s running four-flat. That’s not exciting. I want ’em faster.”
 
He saw some hope, though.
 
“I’m telling you, if it continues like it is, where you have privateers able to run within a couple or three hundredths of the top car, there’d be a lot more of them come out, guaranteed. That was never guaranteed to happen before. Never,” Anderson said. “So this rules package, where everybody’s working with the same box of toys, pretty much, that’s going to happen. It takes time.”
 
Patience is not the virtue of an instant-gratification society. And the Pro Stock old guard marches on.
 
“We do it for the competition. So we think it’s a great class,” Anderson said.
 
So don’t send that funeral bouquet just yet.