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Bill Wood
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
07/09/2008 - 04:04 PM
Los Angeles, Calif.
Marty Ladwig doesn’t want to leave the sport compact world but he’s finding time to race motorcycles again. (photo courtesy National Dragster) » More Photos
Over the last 18 years, nearly all Sport Compact drag racers went through Frank Choi’s BOTI ladder system, which has successfully avoided the chaos currently afflicting NHRA and NOPI pro SC ranks.
If you tossed a coin in the air over the future of Sport Compact drag racing you’d have to believe the coin could fall on its edge as well as its heads or tails or, even, split in half in mid flight! The sport is just that confused right now.
Talk with 10 people and you’ll get 11 different opinions on what will happen next. The craziest thing is that all this was supposed to be resolved last fall at SEMA, where the two relative 800-pound gorillas – NOPI and the NHRA Sport Compact series – climbed onto one ship to set sail into 2008. Well, now, the ship is listing, taking on water and about to break in half. Talk about best-laid plans…
The only thing we know for sure is this: Round 5 of the Battle of the Imports series unfolds this weekend at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. There’ll be qualifying on Friday evening with the big show set for Saturday night. And, yes, BOTI is sharing the marquee this weekend with Round 4 of the Formula Drift calendar, also at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
That concept “big show” is important. Remember it!
Flash back to the beginning of the year. The NOPI Drag Racing Series sanctioned by NHRA announced eight events at NHRA member tracks conducted under NHRA rules. But after seven months of this season’s bad weather and worse economy, there have been postponements, cancellations
I’m told the NOPI/NHRA-sanctioned events in Richmond and Englishtown next month will go on as planned, as will the NOPI Supershow in Atlanta in September. But championship-level drag racers are concerned because they’ve heard little from NOPI since the cancellations were announced last month. To them, the silence is deafening and, in a swamp of silence, rumors are flying faster than a Pro pass.
“I’m not sure what my next event is,” Pro FWD champion Marty Ladwig told me with a strained chuckle. Ladwig is sponsored by Lucas Oil, K&N Filters and General Motors, relative big checks all. “I was committed to 10 races with GM but now it’s pretty much wherever I can go because of NOPI. We’re just trying to make the best of the situation.”
Ladwig is a former AMA Pro Star champion who gets hired periodically to drag race motorcycles in his spare time. He even won a street-based 1000 Super Sport class at a Texas Shootout event late last year. He told me he’s putting a Pro Stock Motorcycle bike together to compete at the NHRA POWERade events in Las Vegas and Pomona at the end of the year.
“Out of six events we’ve been to, we won four (including a Battle of the Imports series Pro FWD record 7.26 ET pass two weeks ago at Budds Creek). The car is awesome,” Marty said. “Definitely, we’d love to continue racing in Sport Compact but the way the sanctioning scenarios are going, things are crazy. Everybody’s kind of in limbo.”
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