S'cuder said

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BlackbirdX Unplugged!!!

Exciting news ….we plan to go out and run BlackbirdX in a number of venues the remainder of this season, unplugged, where we finally light it’s afterburners, as always intended and with an ear to ear grinning Alex Laughlin behind the wheel.

For the remainder of the year, we no longer plan to compete in the NHRA Factory X events.

For the rest of the somewhat long story, read below …….

For decades I’ve listened to folks complain about NHRA, in general but often in relation to the heads up classes. Complaints about their perceived favoritism to a brand and/or to some team or another, demonstrated in this rule, ruling or ‘parity adjustment’ were frequent and plentiful. My response was often along two lines, first, perhaps your view is skewed and here are some facts to defend their actions / choices (and I often did this even when such actions directly, negatively impacted my favorite brand, Dodge) and two, if on a fundamental principles level, are on some significant point(s), you strongly disagree, go race elsewhere.

While there are many depictions and reports of what transpired at the most recent US Nationals in the Factory Showdown and Factory X classes, there are now many things that are irrefutable, published and unquestionably true.

Top level teams and many, many of their drivers were blatantly, flagrantly and in numerous highly deceitful ways, massively cheating to gain advantage and win. Performance changes in these competitors make it clear that this was not a one event occurrence, but a pattern of behavior with corresponding impacts and race outcomes that reach far back to the beginning of this season and perhaps back further. These facts are undoubtedly true.

What is also now apparent and true is that having discovered this, even before the race was run and even with clear further rule violations to follow at this same event, NHRA has made after the fact corrective actions that are far, far less impactful than the infractions themselves. Where immediate disqualifications, multi month or year(s) long suspensions and significant fines would have, in many, many past precedents been applied (where the rule violations, were in fact arguably far less and for far shorter a time), here NHRA chose minor point standings adjustments, almost comical level fines, no DQs and no driver competition / crew chief suspensions. To top it off, those that were clearly participating in such things, have now been given a ‘parity adjustment’ to largely restore the power reduction (about two to two and a half tenths of ET) removed with the cheating that was discovered.

In the famous case of Jerry Eckman, prior to competition, in Pro Stock, a nitrous bottle and system explosion in the pits in his entry, before any runs were made and perhaps one not even yet connected and functional, when discovered, resulted in he and his crew chief being suspended from competition for two years and fined $25,000, each (in today’s dollars equivalent to $50-100k). The system had not been run and based upon performance, there was no clear evidence it ever had been. While this level of corrective action might have been too heavy handed, the contrast to what was just done, is startling.

I will no longer attempt to defend the actions of NHRA, debate their accused favoritism to a brand and/or competitor or group of competitors because their actions are simply, indefensible.
As I’ve often suggested to those who saw it this way, we will no longer compete in these heads up Factory Showdown or Factory X classes in the NHRA.

Win or lose, we enjoy pursuing worthy goals and competing against worthy competitors, especially in our sometimes challenging to make compete brand, Dodge. In these classes, winning or losing now has little to any meaning, well, except perhaps, that with the right influence and applied resources (resources that have little or nothing to do with actually fairly improving the performance of your race car, or driving it well but when whose influence is applied, now so clearly impact rule making, enforcement) and where you can cheat, repeatedly, avoid any real consequence and are rewarded with performance adjustments that favor you, what does winning or appearing to run well mean ?

As disappointing as this has all has been on many levels, and as difficult a decision this is for our team, to me personally, it is not nearly as difficult as the stark realization and conclusions that it inevitably leads to, that to me are far worse.

The conclusion that the competitors you once respected and the rule makers you often defended, in this regard, warrant neither respect nor defense and that their past performances and accomplishments, along with any future outcomes they are involved in, may not be at all what they appear to be… all of this is the real heart crushing truth to me.

This further aggravated by their feeble defenses that what was done was in the ‘gray’ area of the rules, that perhaps we may also have done the same (BlackbirdX, and its older brother Blackbird, have combined been torn down and thoroughly checked 15-20 times with no infraction of any kind, even a minor one, ever identified and no such approaches were ever taken to improving it’s performance), that it is the very ‘innovation’ that drives performance improvement in all such competitive motorsports, that everyone else was cheating also, that in the end, they had no choice but to massively cheat because others must have been doing so to have the performance advantages they had. These arguments reveal their true characters and the depth of guilt they now bath in. They are not competitors, they are something else and it’s possible, they were never really winners in this sport.

As I am not here to judge them, in a broader human way, I do still see them as God’s creations and know, in far more important ways, they are not ‘bad’ people. I will give them all as much grace as I can muster, keep praying for more, for myself and them, but I will not waste our time and resources attempting to fairly compete with them.

In the end, we have a bright and exciting new day in which we will once again, go get after it, pursue and break new performance barriers, find and dive into new endeavors in racing and pour ourselves into helping others, fairly and legitimately pursue their racing, go fast dreams and succeed, after all, its what we have always done at Blackbird Performance.

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