Bob Tasca III was as calm as someone who could be for having his No. 1 qualifying run disallowed on a technical violation. His assessment of Saturday evening’s disqualification was, “It’s [NHRA’s] basketball court.”
Tasca’s 3.842, 336.74 run was squelched when his headers were not deemed to violate the laid back header angle rules but instead had a width discrepancy.
“My problem with the whole situation is all weekend, there’s been a witch hunt out here for header issues,” Tasca said. “On Thursday, we brought all our headers down to NHRA, wanted to make sure all the angles were right. All our angles were correct, no issues. All our headers passed. The car runs great. Saturday night they [NHRA] decide to measure the overall width of the header.”
Evidently, width either wasn’t a problem or was not checked beforehand. Regardless, Tasca said the problem is over time, headers sag.
“You run them, and you can have some variances,” Tasca said. “We happened to have had an older set on, we passed all the angles, no issue, which is, in my opinion, the critical dimension because that determines a performance advantage. If you lay the header back more, it’s more of an advantage.”
Tasca is adamant the width of the headers provides no performance advantage whatsoever. He said his headers were between an eighth and a quarter-inch outside the bounds.
Tasca alleges his Funny Car was declared legal and then abruptly was disqualified.
“The header sagged a little bit, a little bit outside the guidelines,” Tasca continued. “All of the header angles were perfectly fine. No issue. Here’s your number one qualifier hat. See you tomorrow. That’s how it went down.
“[NHRA] the press release, everything is good. Hours later, the decision was reversed. And from my standpoint, it shows, in my opinion, it’s very unprofessional within the NHRA Tech community because clearly there was a difference of opinion, and NHRA Tech officials were overridden by powers that be, and it makes the teams look stupid because they handed us the number one qualifying hats after they teched my car and then they change their mind. So it is what it is. I accept the ruling.”
Tasca said he’s over the issue and is prepared to focus on Sunday’s race.
“It’s their basketball court and their basketball,” Tasca said. “We just play here. And we’re going to go out here focused on winning the race. That’s the truth. The truth is not harmed by the truth. So I’m not disrespectful. It is embarrassing to them and us because let’s be honest, they said it was good and it is what it is. So we’re here playing their game, and we’re going to go and do the best we can within the rules they’ve come up with. If it was a performance of safety, I would be visibly upset with my own team because to me, that is unacceptable.
“Eighth of an inch dimension, quarter of an inch dimension on overall width, which has no effect to the angle of the header. To me, it’s ludicrous, but what it is. It’s their ball field.”
