It’s no secret the state of the NHRA Pro Stock class isn’t as healthy as it has been in the past.

There have many rumors floating around about possible changes NHRA might make to the class, but the sanctioning body hasn’t announced any official changes that will be made to Pro Stock, but that likely will change Saturday.

Graham Light, NHRA senior vice president of racing operations, confirmed to CompetitionPlus.com a meeting is scheduled for 11 a.m. Mountain Time Saturday to discuss the state of Pro Stock. All Pro Stock drivers and owners competing at the Mile-High Nationals are invited to attend the meeting as well as any other Pro Stock owners or drivers who want to fly in an attend the meeting.

“We all remember the days of 30 cars in Pro Stock, but what we are seeing, we have charted out year-by-year, race-by-race we are seeing the numbers diminish,” Light said. “We know it’s costly and we know it’s a huge time commitment to run 24 events, but we can’t sit around idle and not address the health of the category when we see it on the decline. Because if we do, one day we are going to wake up and say there’s not enough cars here for this to continue as a professional category. The only consistent comment from everybody is we need change. They are all not going to like the change, some of them are going to like parts of it and others aren’t, but that’s the way life is.”

According to Light, some of the changes to the Pro Stock class will be immediate.

Light also acknowledged he doesn’t want to see the Pro Stock class vanish.

“It (Pro Stock) is a professional category and a category we care about,” Light said. “It’s part of the Mello Yello Series, it has been for years, we feel we need to do something, and everybody you talk to out there says there needs to be change because if we don’t change it will be the demise of the category in two years, five years, I don’t know what the time frame is, so we have been gathering input for almost a year. We’ve talked to crew chiefs, team owners, team drivers, auto manufacturers, aftermarket manufacturers, and we also got television input, and fan input, and everybody has a different idea, which was to be expected.”

After collecting all the data, a plan is being devised Light said.

“We’ve gone through and spent all this time and took all those ideas and put them all together and sorted through it and we are trying to come up with a plan that minimizes the cost to the teams, and no matter what change you make there’s going to be cost, if we can minimize it, and that’s everybody’s goal, we want to add relevancy to the category somewhat. It’s not going to look like a stock car, but it needs to start heading in a direction more relevant to what Detroit sells, so we can keep the factories involved so that’s important to the teams and us.

“We want fans to become Pro Stock fans and be able to experience what’s going on. We’re going to make some changes that hopefully makes it more fan-friendly and (creates) more fan interest.”

NHRA and FOX Sports officials announced July 14 that starting in 2016 the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series will be televised by FOX Sports 1 (FS1) with four events airing on the FOX national broadcast network during each season of the long-term agreement, providing the world's fastest motorsport with live coverage of a majority of its events.

Light believes the new TV deal also will benefit the Pro Stock class.

“We (NHRA) are taking television production in-house next year, along with the Fox broadcast, so we can do some highlights and spotlight Pro Stock teams that weren’t done in the past,” Light said. “We can give them a little more TV coverage and make them a little more relevant and may be bring some more focus to them which translates down the road to more TV coverage, more sponsorship and so on. Whether that saves the category, we are hopeful it does, but there no new sure things in life. What we do know looking at the path it (the Pro Stock class) has taken in the last five years or so it’s going to become a dinosaur if we don’t do something.”