Speedzone Magazine 2011 NHRA gallerys are here.

Order your 2012 Drag Racing calendars here.

February 1, 2012

As SpeedZone Magazine predicted over two months ago, Mark Lyle was infact named the official starter for the NHRA Full Throttle tour. He is a no BS guy but is very fair and has earned the position with the NHRA. Congratulations Mark. Now the question is, who will replace him in Division Six.

January 27, 2012

IHRA latest press announcments.

January 26, 2012

Good banter at the Team Mission site regarding classes, payouts and the loss of sport compact etc. Go here. With that being said, DRR also has a great thread on similar subjects.

January 24, 2012

January 23, 2012

Three gallerys from Palm Beach

Top Fuel

Funny Car

People and Pits

We have four interviews from PBIR, coming in the next 24 hours. Firstly, a legend in the sport, Gene Snow was there to watch and talk to a bunch of long time friends. He is still going strong and has one of the baddest A/Fuel cars anywhere. His chat is surprisingly frank and an extremely good read. Courtney Force chatted for a few minutes prior to a run against Jack Beckman. She talks about her race against her Dad Saturday. Hillary Will is back behind the wheel again with the Dote Family. She talks candidly about her time away from the sport and what is in store for 2012. Terry McMillen is looking to be a contender in 2012, as he re-upped with his main sponsor Amalie, he added two more substantial associates for 2012, and he gives some insight into what motivates him as he took a major leap a couple years ago from running a TAFC in the NHRA to being a fan favorite in the NHRA's quickest class. Check back in the next day for each interview.

Mainstream NHRA testing is complete at PBIR (but there is a few teams still in private rentals). The fans were out in droves for the evening sessions at one of the nicest facilities in N. America. Why the owners don't do something to make the facility a major event contender, is the major question for most drag racing pundits. It is IHRA sanctioned but does not host a Nitro Jam. They also are not hosting an ADRL event after what appeared to be a good event in 2011. Are they looking at the NHRA? We will have to see. Anyway, here is the photo coverage from Palm Beach. Coverage and photos are here.

January 20, 2012

Speedzone Dean is a proud granddude (grandpa for all you old fashioned) Granddaughter Brooklyn Rae was born via emergency 'C' section and was 5lb5 oz. She is fine and momma is doing well.

Speedzone has one of a few photogs at the Palm Beach test session for the pros this weekend. Pat Welsh will have photos sent to us starting later tonight. Over 20 pro cars are there including all the JFR cars, DSR cars Al-Anabi, Lucas, Wilkerson, Millican, McMillen and others. Bangshift is also there live all weekend. Go here for their live feed.

January 12, 2012

The new Speedzone Magazine email address is speedzone1@shaw.ca Please take note. My secondary email address is speedzoneracing@gmail.com

Continued issues with my internet provider and TV has forced a change to the new provider starting today. We wil have a new email address and will have that address later today. In the meantime, if you need to contact us go tmy standby address speedzoneracing@gmail.com

January 11, 2012

To no surprise, Courtney Force is announced as the four JFR Funny Car Driver. Traxxas, the mega RC car company will be the title sponsor. on the car. Ron Douglas is slated to be the crew chief, with Scott Wible the assistant. The team will also debut a triple frame rail Top Fuel car with the JFR built Boss 500 inch Ford Hemi between the rails. The car will be in test mode all year, as they developed the unique chassis built in-house.

Clay Millican sign on the the full 23 race schedule Parts Plus stepped up to fund the entire season. The TF class is looking to be the most competitive in quite a few years. Rumors of Hot Rod Fuller joining Bob Vandergriff are swirling as well, and when you have the refitted Lucas team, and two new drivers for AJ, the DSR TF team has stayed intact, so they could be the early favorites.

On a sad note, Don Garlits long time crew member and close friend T.C. Lemon passed away from complications due to cancer.

We are working on the NW Outlaws schedule for 2012 and should have it posted in the next five or six days.

For the first time since Speedzone has been on the scene (14 years), a major event at Mission Raceway may be missed. The annual Pro Mod event held in late June or early July is scheduled for the same weekend as the Edmonton Rocky Mountain event. That one, since its inception has been an important event for SpeedZone, but with two major events on the same weekend, we will have to make a decision on which one gets our primary coverage.

January 9, 2012

Here are all the awards winners from the Div 6 banquet.

SPECIAL AWARDS
LODRS Track of the Year
Firebird Raceway

Summit Racing Series Track of the Year
Walla Walla Drag Strip

Most Improved Track
Woodburn Dragstrip

Top Alcohol Driver of the Year
Joey Severance

Sportsman Driver of the Year
Jackie Alley

Mel Bresaw Memorial E.T. Driver of the Year
Paul Comeau

Don Rhyne Memorial Jr. Driver of the Year
Josh Schmanke

Rod Hoerner Memorial Rookie of the Year
Josh Dalrymple

Jerry Verheul Memorial Top Alcohol Crew Chief
Joe Severance

Sportsman Crew Chief of the Year
Barney Davis

Janet Lang Memorial Gracious Lady Award
Taylor Heritage

Ernie Hall Memorial Person of the Year
Shawn Cowie

Hall of Fame
Joe Severance

Had an email conversation with Jon Adams today, and his reason for leaving the NHRA is simple. His wife got great opportunity career wise and and it is close to her family as well. The family thought is would be a great opportunity for them, and I give kudos to Jonathan for letting his wife have her time. He will be missed because of his cool demeanor. While I have certainly been one to question some of his decisions, I also know he did a job that was always going to piss off 50% of the people the decision affected, and he was always available. A tough job and he did it with integrity.

I will have an in-depth interview and Q&A with Jonathan later this week or early next week.

Good luck to the family and good luck in your job search Jonathan.

On the rumor front, Jason Murray has resigned from his position as track Manager at Pacific. I think he wants the job, so he has to be the odds on favor. I don't think you would quit a job unless you got another one??? We'll see soon enough.

A few NHRA announcement Full Throttle wise, as Morgan Lucas announced Brandon Bernstein has been signed as the new driver for the second team car on the Lucas Oil TF team. John Force has a huge press announcement slated for tomorrow. Likely it is a three or four part Release. (1. Courtney announced as a FC driver for the 2012 season. (2. A sponsor announcement (Traxxax) (3. The possible addition of their new Top Fuel operation with daughter Brittanny learning the ropes under the tutelage of (4..........???

Rick Henkelman is back in drag racing, this year he will own and tune an A/Fuel car with Garrett Bateman driving. Sponsorship will come from HipLink Software. The team is reportedly going to acclimate themselves back into the sport and then step into Top Fuel in 2013.

THE NHRA NFC rules have been clarified for the Carbon Brakes on the front wheels. THey are mandatory for all cars running 240mph and faster. Exhibition and match race cars that are running less than 240 need only carbon fibre on the rears. But the first time you run faster, you must have the Carbon Fibre ones on for the next run at an NHRA track. Also single mag and coil rules are clarified.

January 8, 2012

The Division Six banquet was last night and Shawn Cowie and Taylor Heritage was deserving recipeints of two of the major awards. Shawn was voted Div. Six "Person of the Year", and Taylor recieved the "Gracious Lady" award. All the winners will be posted as soon as we get them.

January 6, 2012

The Division six awards are up this weekend and local Al Omond takes home the cash for being the Motorcycle champion.

Big news from the banquet is that DD Jonathan Adams has left the job. Hopefully we find out soon who the new guy or gal is. Will Mike Rice come back? That is a possibility, but I doubt the NHRA would allow him to move back up here.

Mission's Pro Mod event this year has the West Coast Outlaw Pro Mods tapped in as the feature. Hopefully the South West based series can attract a solid field to the event. The bigger thought for Speedzone though, is hoping Mission looks hard at the date, and maybe change it out to the week prior (it is scheduled for July 6-8, 2012), the race as it stands in scheduled for the same weekend as the Rocky Mountain nationals event. The June 29-July 1st weekend is a better choice in my opinion. While the Rocky event does not have pro mods scheduled this year, the Top Sportsman class at the Rockies attract at least 6-10 fast doorcars, ones that would fit right into the Pro Street shootout portion of Missions race. Plus the fact that a numberof other cars and likely a fair number of spectators would be at Edmonton instead of Mission. Even 50 spectators lost isa dollar figure of 1,000-2,500 dollars.

On a personal selfish note, it would mean that the editor of SpeedZone Magazine would have to make a decision to possibly NOT attend a major event at Mission Raceway for the first time since it re-opened 19 years ago.

Click here for the WCOPM schedule (Note their rival assoc., the WCPM's have three events on their schedule at this time. Their tentative schedule is Medicine Hat 7/20-21, Spokane 7/27-28 and Woodburn 9/15-16

The New Regional Top Alcohol series has brought forward a new assoc. dedicated to promoting the two TA class. This is a good deal, and hopefully the tracks and all sponsors will work with the teams to make the 3rd and 4th quickest classes in all of motorsports respected more, promoted more, and eventually compensated more.

Here is the official announcement from Will Hanna Webmaster of Inside Top Alcohol.com:

Just dropping a note to let everyone know that we are making progress in making our Top Alcohol Organization a reality.

The organization will be called the Pro Sportsman Association. We currently have an interim Formation Board of Directors that consists of myself, Noel Manton, Marty Thacker, Mark Billington and Ray Drew. The Board is currently and plans to work free of charge.

We are in the process of trying to finalize our official mission statement, but our goal is still to build the value and ‘brand’ of Top Alcohol racing through the hiring of a professional PR/Marketing staff. This staff and organization will work hand in hand with NHRA, Lucas and the tracks we run regional events to better promote our events. We intend to specifically target increased media exposure in both local and national markets. If we can build our value to both the tracks and NHRA, we feel we can not only insure we maintain the number of races we have currently, but hope to get more tracks to pick us up in the future. By building the awareness of the class through the media, we hope to build our fan following in the long term. We also hope that increased awareness will lead to more new teams getting into the Top Alcohol classes. The Pro Sportsman Association will not get involved with performance based rules issues. The scope of the organization is to be a promotional tool for the Top Alcohol classes, not a governing or mediation board between the NHRA and the racers.

While we have not become an official organization yet, we are diligently researching our options on what type of corporation we will file as. We are not able to accept any dues as of yet, but dues will be set at $695 a year for team or manufacturer membership. We will give everyone roughly one month (from the time we are official) to take advantage of an introductory offer to become a “Founding Member” of the PSA. The discounted rate will be for $595. We will offer a payment plan for those who may not have all of the money up front. The initial payment of $400 must be in before the conclusion of the one month period, with the final $295 (plus a $5.00 filing fee) due by June 1. After the one month grace period, all dues will be set at $695 per year.

We understand during these tough times this may be a tough pill to swallow, but our concern is if without sufficient funds, we will not be able to do the job that needs to be done. If we lose more races in the near future, we all will be spending much more than these dues. This is a very modest investment in our future. When we accomplish our goals, it will be well worth it to all of us.

Our goal is to reach at least 100 members in our first year. We feel this is easily attainable if we are to get a minimum of 35 racers from each class (70 total) and a minimum of 30 manufacturer members, we will reach our goal. I really feel we can go above and beyond that goal.

Our intentions are to use the dues to pay for a full time staff member to do the bulk of the PR and Marketing work. Ideally we would have the budget to have this person on the ground at most of our regional events. We would also like to recruit some college interns to assist our paid staff. Obviously a portion of the dues would have to go to legal, admin and other expenses the association would incur.

We hope to be ‘official’ and accepting dues by the end of January, if at all possible.

Please feel free to email me or any of the other board members if you have any questions or ideas.

Will Hanna - will.hanna@insidetopalcohol.com
Noel Manton – noelmanton@msn.com
Marty Thacker – mlthacker@marathonpetroleum.com
Mark Billington – mark.billington@pepsico.com
Ray Drew – rdrew@wi.rr.com

January 5, 2012

A big announcement for the NHRA as they schedule its first NHRA ever double header Divisional event weekend. Thursday and Friday, February 23-24 will see race #1 and then Saturday and Sunday February 25-26 will see race #2 which will include the two Top Alcohol classes for the first regional event of 2012.

All three SpeedZone Magazine Calendars are now ready for shipping the Last one complete, the Nitro Funny Car version is a 13 month calendar. Go here for ordering and shipping details.

Here are the three calendars ready for shipping:

January 4, 2012

The latest and greatest new product for the multi car teams or guys who double or triple up on classes.

Finally a chiller that doesn't require any ice! That's right NO ICE REQUIRED !!!! Sonny's new chiller is the latest state of the art unit, that only requires water for the initial fill, and 110v power source, this unit is small in size, (24"x22"x31") yet is a work horse. The unit features digital L.E.D. display, to pre set your water temp in between rounds, so you can service the car, and not worry about engine temp. This unit will chill down an engine in just a few minutes, with ultra fast recovery. Works great for multiple car teams. Comes complete with hoses, and fittings. Get yours today. Only 2999.00 on this introductory offer. Call Todd @ Sonny's 434-239-1009 or 509-710-6544

January 3, 2012

NHRA is starting off on the right foot for the TA classes. The regional and National competitor are going to have their team profiles as part of NHRA data base. Here is the release from Eric Lotz, the long time NHRA field marketing liaison for NHRA:

NHRA wants driver profiles
From Eric Lotz, NHRA Field Marketing:

To: All Top Alcohol Class Participants

NHRA recently announced the formation of the new NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series Regional program featuring the drivers of the Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Alcohol Funny Car classes.

In our ongoing efforts to elevate this new Regional program and these two premier classes we would like to develop driver profiles for each of you for use with both motorsports and local media. The profiles may also be used in various ways to help build the fan base of the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series and that of the Top Alcohol classes.

If you have already filled out this profile form as a division champion, please disregard this email – you do not need to fill it out again.

Below you will find a link that will open the profile. Please take a few minutes and fill it out and submit it as soon as possible. This is time sensitive project as we need to keep things moving forward as the 2012 season approaches.

https://adobeformscentral.com

If you are unable to open the link please let me know and I will re-send it.

Please feel to contact me at any time if you have any questions and/or concerns.

Happy Holidays!

Thank you,

Eric Lotz
Director, NHRA Field Marketing
elotz@nhra.com
626.250.2287

January 1, 2012

Happy New Year to all drag race fans. We are only a month away from the start of the 2012 Full Throttle season. Testing gets underway in two weeks at Las Vegas and Palm Beach.

Shipping gets underway this week for calendars, Hemi and Doorslammer Tuesday and Nitro Funny Car Thursday.

Speedzone Magazine coverage from 2011 and earlier is here.