Bernstein racing calls it quits

[Bernard Kron]

I'm just curious. can some one explain how modern technology is killing drag racing?

This is actually a very good question, the answer to which applies far beyond drag racing. As any endeavor evolves and becomes widely popular it becomes the way for people who are good at it to make a living. Others are willing to pay for a quality experience in engaging in it. It's true of just about everything, from politics to music to cooking to sports to.... You get the picture. So what starts out as an "amateur" activity defined by those who do it on a generally not-for-profit basis increasingly defines itself in terms of the "official" way of doing things, usually for a perfectly good reason based on increased quality and performance. In the case of drag racing, as dragsters became increasingly specialized and we dropped from 8 second quarters to 7, 6 and eventually 3's and trap times crossed 185, 200, 220, 230 and eventually far north of 300, the means to achieve this became increasingly specialized and the number of people who could provide racers with the knowledge, techniques and materials to achieve it became smaller relative to the number of people doing it. Demand increases while supply (the knowledge, techniques and investment in time, education and capital to aieve success) decreased. So prices go up. Today it's relatively easy to obtain a 1,000 HP motor (you can read about one every month in Hot Rod), all it takes is a check book and about $6,000.00 to $10,000 depending on how much of your own work you're willing to do - you can even do it for less if you have enough of the aforementioned knowledge, techniques and investment, but then you probably do it for a living. Then, if you spend enough on a delivery system for said HP (a "car") you can achieve truly staggering times at the strip and WIN with regularity. But the bottom line is that the cost to achieve success, relative to most people's income, has gone up substantially, including, significantly, what it costs you to enter and run every weekend.

The same thing can be observed almost anywhere else, from your doctor's or dentist's office, to the supermarket and even when you go out to see a popular musical act. The professionalization of these activities have added huge costs in capital equipment and the knowledge and experience to use it successfully. These are "barriers to entry" and make it more likely that purveyors of these things can then charge more for them as supply fails to keep up with demand.

One response to all this is to strip down the activity to a simpler, more basic version. In some areas, like medicine, it can be hard to do and still get the desired outcome. But in other areas like music and motorsports, it can be done with a fair amount of success. Thus in drag racing the huge revival of grassroots racing, the retro-musclecar (i.e. Pinks) phenomenon, and even the still-small retro-drag meet and LSR thing at old unused air strips, are all signs of this. (In music it's possible to travel with a small soundsystem and a laptop and reproduce what you did in the studio and keep your costs way down - the style of music you play just has to permit it.). So technology can be either a barrier or a facilitator. The relatively cheap high quality replacement parts that keeps all those old muscle cars running, not to mention the advent of the crate motor as a means to achieve significant HP at relatively low cost, are both examples of technology as facilitator. But at the highest levels (for those who really feel the need to see the far side of 300 MPH and experience running in the 3's) technology is relatively scarce and expensive and the number of Top Fuel teams is rapidly disappearing...