Gary Gardella may try RWD racing in the ADRL next season. (photo courtesy National Dragster) » More Photos

That includes one of Marty’s biggest and best-funded competitors in Pro FWD, Gary Gardella. He’s more than committed to racing in Sport Compacts somewhere but, with fewer races to run and major sponsors to satisfy like Red Bull, DuPont Paints and GM, Gary needs somewhere to stage his Cobalt on the weekends.

“It’s tough for me to say,” Gardella hesitated. He’s searching like Ladwig and others, but he was impressed last weekend when he ran at an American Drag Racing League (ADRL) event in Roanoke, Va. ADRL events are run on eighth-mile tracks but they attract the big crowds that sponsors love thanks to little or no ticket prices at sponsor-supported ADRL events.

“I’m not 100 percent going into the ADRL series yet,” Gardella said. “I just see so much potential in that series. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for drag racing.” That’s a huge admission for Gardella, who was one of the first on board the NOPI/NHRA ship after SEMA last year. “I definitely see myself being there next season.”

Gardella, a FWD specialist, isn’t taking that lightly. He’s assembling the pieces for a RWD car powered by a GM EcoTec engine to run in an ADRL class aimed at cars capable of running less than 4.3 seconds in the eighth mile on 10.5 inch tires.

“I’m looking for a (Jerry) Haas car and I’d like to buy one as soon as possible,” Gary told me. “I’m looking to stay involved in Sport Compact. I’m not looking to bail on it.”

That could prove difficult, though, because of all the uncertainty. Many Sport Compact stars such as Justin Humphreys, Mat Hartford and Matt Scranton are jumping into the rabbit hole of NHRA POWERade Pro stock with Humphreys pushing his foot further through the looking glass so far.

Ten years ago names such as Humphreys, Hartford and Scranton punched tickets but when they left, as well as many others, the sport suffered. It’s tough for any sport to keep shining when the stars go away. A man well aware of the problem is Frank Choi, who’s kept the Battle of the Imports (BOTI) series afloat for 18 years by avoiding the lure of the money-loving professional stars and sponsors to concentrate on sportsman and grassroots racers.

“I talked with (NHRA founder) Wally Parks and (former IHRA president and owner) Bill Bader when I started this,” Choi explained. “They both told me that I’d be successful as long as I kept the sportsmen and grassroots racers happy.” Choi said he doesn’t have a “Wally” – the NHRA’s Holy Grail of drag racing trophies – to give away to his race winners, but he always has racers and the fans who watch them.

Now, remember the “big show” concept I mentioned earlier? Choi agrees with me that his business isn’t built on a show of entertainment but on entertaining competition that shows up when racers compete under carefully constructed rules.

“I’m not sitting in a corner with a grin,” Choi said. “We’ve been spending more than enough time doing damage control with the recent departure of the NHRA Sport Compact series and NOPI canceling some of their events. It’s giving the perception that this particular industry is not in a healthy state. To the contrary, drag racing is thriving. Drag racing has always been a participant-driven sport.”

He said the media will follow the stars and certain classes but it’s forgotten about the hundreds of grassroots racers who are the backbone of Sport Compact drag racing. Whatever the media has done, Choi, with BOTI, has built a very successful business on the gleanings.

Choi has more than proven that the sport isn’t just the cars and the stars. In the 10 years since the first tube-chassis Pro FWD car, there’s been hours of television, reams of media and millions of promotional dollars spent, only to produce maybe five comparable Pro FWD cars capable of marquee performances and fewer Pro RWD cars. That isn’t a legacy on which to build a big show. Yet the sport survives on the sportsmen and grassroots racers BOTI supports.

It isn’t coincidence that professional racers such as Gardella, Ladwig and the Bergenholtz Brothers – all sponsored by major contracts with major manufacturers – once again find themselves knocking on the BOTI back gate looking for a race. BOTI is where they started as grassroots racers and, curiously, it’s a business that remains for them to race again.

Over the last 18 years, nearly all Sport Compact drag racers went through Choi’s ladder system, but it’s the system that remains because Frank has supplied a product to a core audience which responds event after event.

“The number of sponsors that have signed up with our series has definitely increased over the last three years,” Choi said. “You’ve just got to be fiscally responsible and stay within your means. We’re in a far, far better place than we were at this time last year.”

If only NOPI and the NHRA could say the same.