Don Schumacher will participate in a panel discussion
on Nov. 27 at the Motorsports Marketing Summit in New York
City.

Schumacher, whose son Tony claimed his fifth NHRA Top Fuel
championship earlier this month, and whose teams have earned 102 national event
victories since Don Schumacher Racing became a multi-team operation in 2001,
will join other motorsports business leaders in the "Opportunities in Emerging
Motorsports: Reaching New Markets and Demographics" discussion. Schumacher will
be joined by Robert Dingham, AMA; Roger Edmondson, Grand-Am; Ben Geisler, World
of Outlaws; among others.

With the cost of sponsorship in major series
escalating, many companies are looking for ways to test the waters in
motorsports. Fortunately for these corporate marketers, there are hosts of
series that have experienced robust growth in the past decade and offer sponsors
attractive alternatives to the often high cost of entry for other circuits. This
panel will discuss those opportunities in front of an audience of motorsports
professionals (sports marketing representatives, advertisers, corporate
representatives, team owners, et al) from all disciplines.

Racing legend, Sonny Tindal, will be
the first to admit that he’s been around the block in drag racing and even did a
second lap. This off-season the cagey veteran doorslammer from Cayce, South
Carolina will contemplate whether he’s up for racing a 51st season in
the eighth-mile Quick Eight events throughout the
Carolinas.

Tindal says he can still cut a light
with the competition; it’s just the between-rounds demands that have put a
strain on his 70-year old body.

“I still love to drive them although I
don’t like to work on them as much as I used to,” Tindal said. “Working on them
is harder on me now than it used to be.”

Make no bones about it. Tindal has a
strong following at those events as well as his few stops on the American Drag
Racing League tour.

Their ride was short-lived, but young NHRA upstarts Morgan Lucas and J.R. Todd’s first attempt at the 40th annual SCORE Tecate Baja 1000, the world’s most famous desert race, still ended up being the thrill of a lifetime.

Driving the Class 1 Lucas Oil Products/Torco Race Fuels Diablo Penhall/Chevy off-road vehicle with teammates Ed Hullinger and fellow drag racer John Spar, the Top Fuel tandem gained a whole new respect for the event and all that it stands for.   

When Bubba Corzine needed a diversion
from the demands of fielding and driving a racecar, timing was on his side. When
Corzine walked away from driving Pro Stock, he journeyed into the complex world
of timing drag races.

Corzine joined forces with Bob
Brockmeyer, the founder of the Compulink timing system, where he worked for 11
years.

He’s since moved on to the world of
serving as general manager of Kennedale Dragway in Texas and devotes a portion
of his time to serving as competition director for the two-year old American
Drag Racing League. Once again, it was all about timing.

Too much travel and an investment in
two convenience stores led to Corzine’s decision to hang up the national tour in
favor of working at a local track.

“I worked a bit on the weekends at
Kennedale and the opportunity presented itself for me to get back into this and
I took it,” Corzine said. “It’s a five-day work week. It’s a job and we work
that place.”

There will be a new driver in the black and yellow BME machine when the 2008
season kicks off in February. Second-generation racer Troy Buff will replace
Alan Bradshaw, who is moving to Dexter Tuttle's Top Fuel team.

While the 2007 IHRA Knoll Gas Nitro Jam World Champions were at the top of the bill at the championship banquet held at the Kalahari resort in Sandusky, Ohio it was the IHRA Sportsman of the Year who stole the show.

An emotional Jack Wyatt earned IHRA’s most prestigious award through his deeds and demeanor away from the strip during the 2007 season. Wyatt was moved by the shootings at Virginia Tech and used his Nitro Funny Car as a moving, visible tribute to those who lost their lives in that terrible tragedy

While most Americans will be enjoying a traditional Thanksgiving weekend holiday, Australians will be gathering at Shepparton in Victoria for the 15th Annual Street Commodores Spring Nats Car Show, said to be among the largest in the nation.

Highlighting the weekend’s activities will be Brett “The Boss” Stevens’ Jack Daniels-sponsored Falcon Burnout Ute, a Down Under-produced pickup powered by a 2,500 horsepower alcohol-fueled engine.

New chassis configurations are reportedly pending for the Funny Car
division and one particular area that is being monitored is the use of
heat treated tubing under the current S.F.I. specs.
 
Like every other competitor, Funny Car veteran Ron Capps has heard the
arguments about the use of heat treated versus normalized tubing in
chassis applications. In a post-run interview by Alan Reinhart over the
track PA in Las Vegas, Capps left no doubt where he stood on the issue
by offering his support of heat treat tubing in his Murf McKinney
chassis.
 
“I personally don’t think it’s got anything to do with it being heat
treated,” Capps told Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com recently. “I’ll
continue to drive whatever Murf McKinney will build for me.  People
have to be educated before they make assumptions and before they go
making public statements.  Part of that whole thing with the chassis is
we’ve been running a slip tube and they’ve all been heat treated cars.