Lack of Sponsors Forcing Drivers to Run on Empty

Rain put a damper on the first day of qualifying for the National Hot Rod Assn. Winternationals at L. A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona this week. But that was a minor problem for driver Dale Pulde of Granada Hills.

It is the opening race of the season for the NHRA, but for Pulde, the defending funny-car champion of the International Hot Rod Assn., it may be the last.

Pulde, like other top-name funny-car drivers, faces a problem with sponsorship. The money is drying up.

Don Prudhomme, also from Granada Hills, skipped the race because he did not have a sponsor. Al Segrini of South Easton, Mass., likely will miss the season for the same reason. John Lombardo of Newhall will drive for retired Raymond Beadle in the Blue Max, but with no firm grip on a major sponsor. Lombardo probably will miss all the races on one of the two major circuits.

Despite last year’s performance, Pulde lost major sponsorship at the end of last season. He will compete in the Winternationals with backing from Roger Sound Laboratory. The company is based in Southern California, however, and does not plan to sponsor the driver in areas of the country where it does not have a market.

For Pulde, the future is as unpredictable as the weather.

“If I don’t find somebody by the end of the month, it’s over,” Pulde said flatly. “I’ve already got somebody who wants to buy the tractor and trailer. I can either keep my two cars or just sell the cars and start fresh next year.”

Pulde is not alone.

Prudhomme’s Pontiac Trans-Am funny car sits silently in a Northridge shop, its 2,500-horsepower nitro-methane-burning engine just waiting to be fired up. With that car, Prudhomme broke the NHRA funny-car speed record (264.86 m.p.h.) last season in October’s World Finals at Pomona.

The car is likely to stay dormant until Prudhomme can find some big backing. He, like Pulde, lost two major sponsors at the end of last season. It is the first time Prudhomme has missed the Winternationals since 1964, but he hopes to compete in the next event, the Gatornationals on March 13-16.

“We’ve been working on things, and the car’s ready to go,” Prudhomme said. “But the sponsorship didn’t come through. We’re still working on stuff, and we’re hoping to have it together by Gainesville. But if our sponsor program doesn’t get going we won’t run the circuit--period.”

Both drivers have gone beyond pointing fingers. They’re throwing darts, and the sanctioning organizations are their targets.

“The NHRA is doing really well, and there’s only a few drivers that are doing really well,” Prudhomme said. “They’re in fat city right now and I’m happy for them. But the fact remains that we’ve brought sponsors to the NHRA and the IHRA, and they don’t bring us any sponsors now. The NHRA has something like 86 sponsors right now. I don’t have one.”

Drag racing was third in attendance last year behind the Championship Auto Racing Teams’ Indy-car circuit and NASCAR’s Winston Cup. According to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., NHRA events drew 773,000 fans in 14 events, an average of 55,214 people at each stop. That is an average increase of 5,047 over 1984. IHRA event attendance jumped an average of 3,325 per event from the previous year.

Ironically, racing’s success could lead to its decline because the competition for sponsorship has grown to be as strong as the competition on the track.

“What has happened is that sponsorship has become as competitive as everything else,” said Steve Earwood of the NHRA. “There’s simply more folks trying to get the same dollars.”

Earwood said that his group and the IHRA are upgrading racing facilities this season. The function of sanctioning bodies is to provide a forum, but there is little else it can do to provide drivers with sponsorship, he said.

Said Earwood: “We set the stage here so a guy can go out and get a sponsor. The racers have always had some sort of problems, and the sanctioning body is the first target. I hate it that Don Prudhomme is not here. But how can we find a sponsor and say, ‘Here, go to Don Prudhomme?’ It wouldn’t be fair to the other guys.

“It’s come down to numbers. It’s the haves and the have nots, that’s just the way it is.”

Earwood offers several suggestions to drivers.

“Be a little more professional and make Madison Avenue a little more aware,” Earwood said. “Go talk to Kenny Bernstein. He knows how to do it.”

Bernstein, a funny-car driver based in Dallas, earned the NHRA World Championship last year and is heavily sponsored.

“I don’t know if I’m doing anything different than the other drivers,” Bernstein said. “I’ve just been fortunate. I don’t like to see any individuals without sponsorship. We need Prudhomme and Segrini here. We cannot afford to lose them. We can’t put on a show if we don’t have any cars.

“With Prudhomme, his sponsor, Pepsi-Cola, made a decision across the board to get out of racing completely. What could he do?” Bernstein said.

“There’s five or six of what I’d call major drivers without sponsorship. I haven’t seen that many people without sponsorship for five or six years. When you’re banging on a door that’s been beaten on 10 times already, it gives a sponsor a lot to choose from.

“We’ve got to perceive drag racing to the executives in the same light as the Indy-car circuit,” Bernstein said. “Most of the sponsors are 50 to 55 years old. The last time they went to a drag race was when they were 17. It was ducktails and leather jackets--all that stuff then. It’s not like that anymore.”

Lombardo, a 12-year veteran who also lost major sponsorship when Stroh’s beer withdrew its support after last season, had several suggestions to improve both circuits. One is to shorten the competition from four to two days--one for qualifying and the next for eliminations--to cut drivers’ costs. Lombardo also suggested that the NHRA and IHRA sanction only the proven money-making races, such as the Winternationals and the Gatornationals.

“There’s a couple of race tracks that are kind of marginal for length, safety and expense,” Lombardo said. “It would be better to have 10 races with great purses instead of a lot of races with little purses.”

There are other drivers who would welcome fewer races.

“If you get a sponsor for $300,000, that’s good for 18-20 races,” Pulde said. “There’s going to be 30 races this year. With the travel and all, it’s hard just to get a day off.”

Said Bernstein: “I think 20 or 21 races for both circuits is plenty. When you go beyond that, the expenses get heavier, and a sponsor will only go so far.”

The NHRA and IHRA oppose that idea since each race brings in money for the sanctioning groups. The two organizations also believe that more races afford the drivers more opportunities to win money. The NHRA will have one more event this season than last season. The IHRA will have two additional events.

Race winnings do not cover the void left by the loss of sponsors. At the Winternationals, for example, the winner of the funny-car competition will receive $20,000.

“It costs us that much just to run in an event,” Prudhomme said. “Provided we don’t tear too much up.”