The NHRA will adjust its between-rounds turnaround times for the professional teams between the semifinal and final rounds to 55 minutes instead of 50 during the NHRA SpringNationals at Royal Purple Raceway outside of Houston, Texas.
NHRA VP of Operations Graham Light confirmed with CompetitionPlus.com Sunday that he had met with a number of team owners and determined 55 minutes was doable but five minutes less wasn’t.
“Fifty minutes was just a number we threw out in Pomona,” Light explained. “We wanted to see if this was an obtainable number. It was pushing to the point where we could have ended up with a single and this certainly wasn’t what we wanted.”
The NHRA will adjust its between-rounds turnaround times for the professional teams between the semifinal and final rounds to 55 minutes instead of 50 during the NHRA SpringNationals at Royal Purple Raceway outside of Houston, Texas.
NHRA VP of Operations Graham Light confirmed with CompetitionPlus.com Sunday that he had met with a number of team owners and determined 55 minutes was doable but five minutes less wasn’t.
“Fifty minutes was just a number we threw out in Pomona,” Light explained. “We wanted to see if this was an obtainable number. It was pushing to the point where we could have ended up with a single and this certainly wasn’t what we wanted.”
Light said the NHRA had worked with the 50 minute turnaround at previous events in Pomona, Phoenix and Gainesville. The quickest turnaround, he confirmed, was Tony Schumacher at 47 minutes while the average for the entire professional contingent was 52 to 56 minutes.
Light believes the average could have been even better with increased escorts, a practice which will be improved this weekend in Houston. The NHRA will employ four police motorcycle escorts and blocked off path routes to the pits for the teams with increased security.
However, in the best interest of the show’s quality, the parties agreed to extend the between-rounds time.
“Once the maintenance is done, we will escort them back to the staging lanes,” Light added.
Sunday’s live show deadline is 4 PM, CST, when the race must be completed.
The NHRA attempted live television back in the early 1990s and even experimented with pay-per-view events. The last couple of seasons NHRA has worked towards presenting live final rounds.
NHRA Director of Communications Jerry Archambeault confirmed the Houston experiment with two rounds of live television will determine future live events.
“We looked into the opportunities and Houston obviously made the most sense to us,” Archambeault said. “We’ll do this and see how it all works and then we’ll use this to look at future events.”
Being flexible in ensuring the between-rounds maintenance is important to achieve the end goal is how Light sees the situation.
“We all believe live television is important to the growth of our sport,” Light pointed out. “Our sport doesn’t lend itself well to live television because of the length and turnaround times.
And with the adjustment Light believes all parties involved, the race teams and NHRA, have taken a major step forward.
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