The fact NHRA officials are considering making changes to the Stock/Super Stock program isn’t lost on participants in the class.

Alan Roehrich, a crew chief and engine builder in the class, is unsure how the changes are going to work or if they will work at all.

“The word right now is they are actually going to move these new factory cars to an FX (Factory Experimental) class,” said Alan Roehrich. “If they do that, that is not a problem. That would be an equitable solution. I know a bunch of these guys who race these cars and we respect each other and really that is what they (the NHRA) need to do. They need to be in a special class. They have to separate them. There is no other way.”

Roehrich, who is based in Murfreesboro, Tenn., is an engine builder and crew chief on two 1969 Camaros driven by Kevin Cradduck. One of the Camaros is AA Stock Automatic car and the other a Super Stock E Automatic car.

The fact NHRA officials are considering making changes to the Stock/Super Stock program isn’t lost on participants in the class.

Alan Roehrich, a crew chief and engine builder in the class, is unsure how the changes are going to work or if they will work at all.

“The word right now is they are actually going to move these new factory cars to an FX (Factory Experimental) class,” said Alan Roehrich. “If they do that, that is not a problem. That would be an equitable solution. I know a bunch of these guys who race these cars and we respect each other and really that is what they (the NHRA) need to do. They need to be in a special class. They have to separate them. There is no other way.”

Roehrich, who is based in Murfreesboro, Tenn., is an engine builder and crew chief on two 1969 Camaros driven by Kevin Cradduck. One of the Camaros is AA Stock Automatic car and the other a Super Stock E Automatic car.

Chad Rhodes, who resides in Daphne, Ala., and campaigns a AA Stock Automatic 1969 Corvette and an I/SA 1992 Camaro, shared the same thoughts as Roehrich.

“I think the ideal thing to do would be to let these (new) cars beat up on each other for four or five years,” Rhodes said. “Factory involvement in the class is great. It is wonderful and I wish GM would get back in as well. However, if you start giving factories carte blanche to create whatever they want to create, that becomes a problem.”

The NHRA does have a sliding scale when it comes to adding horsepower, but the scale only has three numbers – 1.25 percent, 2.25 percent, and 3.25 percent. The sanctioning body also has a sliding scale for reducing horsepower. NHRA can take off 1.25 or 2.25 percent of horsepower, depending how far under the index a car is.

“What I’m trying to do is to expand that scale to a broader range so that when we have these combinations that slip through the cracks and come out and run those kind of numbers like they did at Indy (Sept. 1-6), we (NHRA) are not going to be limited to only be able to give them 3.25 percent,” said Patrick Cvengros, NHRA’s Technical Services Representative in a story on Attitude’s CompetitionPlus.com Monday.

Right now, NHRA is using what the Ford and the Mopar representatives gave the sanctioning body for the Stock and Super Stock Class.

Roehrich says that’s a key source of the present issues with the class.

“The biggest thing about these new cars is they fundamentally change Stock Eliminator if you put them in the class,” Roehrich said. “For the entire history of Stock Eliminator, as long as it has been around, it had to be a production car you could buy at the dealer and drive home. These cars can’t be driven on the street ever.

“When you allow the factories to create things they do not have to get to pass any kind of a standard, and they do not have any kind of a restriction on them, you, for the lack of a better term have opened up Pandora’s box. What they can do now is produce a bunch of bodies in white, go to the NHRA and pick any pile of parts they want to out of their catalog and say this is an engine and it goes in this car we never produced at this weight and we’re rating it at some kind of ridiculously low horsepower. Now, every year somebody can come in an obsolete every other car in the class. It all sounds good for a little while, but when everybody keeps obsoleting these cars, only four or five people in the country can keep buying them.”

Roehrich brought up the example of the 2008 Ford Cobra Jet.

“I can tell you for a fact they make more horsepower at the rear wheels than the fastest traditional Stock Eliminator car in the world makes at the flywheel,” Roehrich said. “They make it in factory trim, you do not pull the valve covers off it.”

Rhodes agreed with Roehrich.

“The problem comes with some of these new cars, specifically the Cobra Jets because they are supercharged,” Rhodes said. “NHRA does not have a clue what this motor is capable of.”

Roehrich said he runs the same combination as the fastest guys in the world with far traditional cars, the Sorensen brothers - Joe and Hal - who run 427/425 Camaros.

“Their cars make 660 to 670 horsepower at the flywheel,” Roehrich said. “The new Mustang when it came out made 721 horsepower at the rear wheels with the valve covers never being pulled off the motor. You have to understand, the Sorensen brothers and the other fast car like this Bobby DeArmond and his engine builder Gary McGlasson, have had those cars since the early 1980s. They have been beating on these things 30 years to get them to make 650 horsepower. I can’t make but 610 horsepower.”

Glen Gray, NHRA’s Vice President of Technical Operations, acknowledged change for Stock and Super Stock is being explored right now; the NHRA isn’t going to wait for the off-season. The final national event of the NHRA season is the 46th annual Automobile Club of Southern California Finals Nov. 11-14 in Pomona, Calif.

Gray added, the NHRA is looking at possibly adding 5 more intervals on the current sliding scale.

Danny Gracia, NHRA’s National Technical Director, said the Stock and Super Stock committee, which is made up of Bob Lang, Bob Blackwell, Bruce Bachelder, Dave Mohn and Cvengros is going to meet sometime this weekend at the 26th annual Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals in Reading, Pa. Reading, which is the next national event, slated for Oct. 7-10.

Gray said if the NHRA makes a change to Stock/Super Stock it would be effective Jan. 1, (2011) and the drivers would be notified well ahead of time of the changes.

The Automatic Horsepower Factoring System is used to review and evaluate runs in Stock and Super Stock for possible horsepower adjustments.

“The Automatic Horsepower Factoring System was actually originally developed by some of the racers because they wanted to take the human element out of it,” Gracia said. “We used to take a column of all the classes and we would take the most predominate car out the equation and see what the averages were. A lot of the racers didn’t like that. They wanted to have an automatic system. This (the AHFS) was drawn up by a lot of racers and we tweaked it a little bit and this is what they wanted.”

According to NHRA policy, the AHFS review is conducted twice per racing season. The two reviews are compiled individually so the data is not cumulative. Runs included in the AHFS database are limited to final qualifying runs (Q data) and all elimination runs (E data) at NHRA national events only. (At events where class eliminations are run, all runs are included in the AHFS database. Only the first round of class is part of qualifying and therefore is part of the "Q" database.) The "Q" data and "E" data files are the official data gathered by the NHRA timing system and processed through the NHRA Information Technology department. NHRA "Q" data and "E" data are the only data files used for the AHFS.

The first review period includes data from national events 1 through 11 and the second period includes runs from events 12 through 23.

Roehrich says the AHFS doesn’t work.

“The Automatic Horsepower Factoring System is fundamentally flawed,” Roehrich said. “It is an attempt to get away from what they did years ago. They had a committee of humans and when you introduce humans into this, you introduce human emotions and relationships and that is a bad thing. It was really to the point where there was one guy who could walk up to you in the lanes and say, ‘OK I’m adding 10 horsepower to your car, go back and put 80 pounds on it if you are going to run (Class) A.’ The Automatic Horsepower Factoring System has several flaws, not the least of which is there is no correction whatsoever for the weather conditions that the pass is made in.”

Roehrich further explained what he meant by the weather conditions.

“I never see anything better than the air at Gainesville (Fla.), and it is 500 to 600 feet,” Roehrich said. “A guy with the identical car as me can go run Atco (N.J.) Raceway today and Atco may be 400 feet below sea level and they (NHRA) correct everybody to that run. Another example is Mission Raceway Park (in Mission, British Columbia, Canada) that they run in Division 6. It is a sea level track they run in May and October, and think how good the weather is going to be there. So, if that guy can go out and run a 9.50, they (NHRA) do not adjust that to the fact that he’s running at 200 feet below sea level as far as barometric pressure and humidity go. They (NHRA) do not correct any of that it. The Automatic Horsepower Factoring System completely ignores that.”

Roehrich says several racers have come together and come up with what they believe will help improve the AHFS.

“We’re asking them (NHRA) to adapt, a system that is similar to what they use in industries and it is called Statistical Process Control,” Roehrich said. “What this does, for example, if you make a bunch of parts, it measures each part and if a part gets so far out of control, in other words it starts exceeding the tolerance level, it stops and adjusts the process. What is also does is that it helps you turn around and prevent stuff from getting out of control. We drew this up for them (NHRA) and showed them exactly how to do it, and showed them how it worked. We wanted them (NHRA) to go to each (NHRA) Division and buy them a weather station. When they run a divisional event and a national event in that division come out at the beginning of qualifying and at the end of each qualifying session and take a weather reading. Put the weather reading into the computer. There are a dozen programs that will factor this for you, pick one. Pick one to factor everything back to what we call an SAE standard day, which is
79 degrees and 29.90 barometric pressure and the relative humidity also has to be factored in as well. Then, take and record the elapsed time and the mph at the eighth-mile and quarter-mile. If you factor all of these to a standard, you will immediately find the cars that are what we call sandbagging. Smart racers know how to sandbag, and they could still fool this system, but it is a lot more difficult than the system they have now. The system they have now you can ease out of the gas a little bit at 1,000 feet and kill a couple of mph, and I also would kill four tenths (off the elapsed time). When they take that run and put it into the average, you will not get anything for it.”

Roehrich says it would take no extra effort for the NHRA to start utilizing the Statistical Process Control method.

“A guy walks out on the starting line, right behind the starter, and holds this little weather station out, and presses a button and records the reading just like I do,” Roehrich said. “If you do these things (with the Statistical Process Control), you can make the Automatic Horsepower Factoring System work 10 times better than it does now. Adjust each run to the weather. The problem is they (NHRA) are comparing runs in 500 feet of air to runs in 3,500 feet of air, and they assume them to be the same and they are not.”

Roehrich believes adjusting to the weather will benefit the AHFS, but it will not solve all the problems that are present with the system. Nor will the NHRA adding more horsepower intervals.

“The system, even if they (NHRA) add options to it, is not going to correct problems fast enough,” Roehrich said. “For example, there is a car I’m familiar with and it is one of the new Challengers that runs (Class) A. This car was here at a local track last October, and he was dialed-in, at the time, what would have been an instant horsepower pass. The index in (Class) A at the time was 11.30 (seconds), so back then a 9.89 (second run) would have been instant horsepower and you would have got 3.25 percent. Not only did he dial-in at 9.89 seconds, he outran the fastest (Class) A cars around here easily in bracket mode and he was at (Class) B weight, not (Class) A weight. Then, he turned around and dialed-in at 9.82 seconds. This same car goes to a national event around five months later, and races against a legitimate very fast traditional (Class) A car and just spanks it. Then, he comes back and does the same thing four months later to another very fast legitimate (Class) A car. So, here is what I’m saying,
you can keep hitting these guys, but they are going to go two or three years or more before you can possibly get them close to where they belong.”

Roehrich also addressed another issue he thinks may hinder the effectiveness of the AHFS.

“The way this system is set up if you can certify a body in white at a shipping weight, which is what we go by, that the car has never produced at and then you actually don’t even have to produce an engine, you can create another car as soon as this batch of cars gets hit to where they are close to being factored correctly,” Roehrich said. “All they need to do is come out with a new car. Chrysler just released this 500-cubic inch, V10 Hemi Challenger. If they (NHRA) did everything they could to the Automatic Horsepower Factoring System, the problem is that every year, you are faced with cars that are not even in the ballpark. It’s not a tenth or two tenths or three tenths, it is five or six tenths. Let’s say they (NHRA) factor the current 5.7 and 6.1 Hemi cars correctly and they go in and correct the 352 and 428 Cobra Jet cars. Right now, we have a brand new V10 Challenger and it is going to be here next year and they are already saying that it is not the only one, there are two or three more of these crate m
otors. Ford is going to do the same thing. They’re just going to come out with another two or three crate motors. It’s not like back in the old days when you had a Hemi car and you actually put the motor in the car and drove it up on the trailer and backed it off the trailer at the dealership and the guy bought the car, signed the title, and drove it home. As much as these guys want to make it like that, this is not like back to the days of the L72 or ZL1 Camaro or the Street Hemi or the 428 Super Cobra Jet and all that.”

Roehrich is hopeful the NHRA will do the right thing, especially for the average Stock/Super Stock competitor.

“The average racer like us, who goes to maybe six points meets a year and four or five national events, if he races for 20 years legitimately he will have five or six chances ever to win a national event at the most,” Roehrich said. “When he comes up against something like this that he has no hope of competing with, that there is no excuse for, that’s something drag racing can’t stand. If you’re going to spend $260 to get into a national event and if it is going to cost you $350 worth of diesel (fuel) to get there, and you spent $15,000 on an engine to go in a car that is worth about $30,000, how are you going to feel about spending about $1000 to $1,200 a weekend to go race when the odds are when you get one of these (new) cars heads up, you’re done, not just in class, but in final eliminations. This is putting some people who can afford to race out (of racing).”

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