Mid-Season review - DIESEL Motorsports!

I usually publish a marketing review of the sport by mid-year but we were so late in getting the season started because of the heavy Spring rains. Once the Summer got going I think everything picked up for diesel performance business and events.

What I am hearing from the shops, manufacturers and businesses they are quite busy right now with diesel performance and maintenance work for the trucks. A lot of the business has to do with making the motors stronger with internal parts and running the maintenance that will keep the diesel trucks running for their work.

Diesel fuel has finally come down so being affordable is easy and in some locations it is cheaper than gas. This allows a little relief from the rising cost of goods across the board for family members. The cost of keeping the competition diesels going in the upper classes have grown and many shops who used to fix the breaks in a week or two may be done for the season. This causes less higher end trucks at the events but the number of the lower to mid level classes have grown at the events.

So more people are buying and using diesel vehicles in their life and using them on the weekends for either a hobby or pleasure. That aligns with the past summer's report from a research group hired by the government, they reported diesel fuel use to increase by 28% by the year 2021 and the use of domestic and light hd vehicles will increase by 23% by 2021!

It is no longer the dirty fuel, the new cleaner diesels have helped our image and even brought more people to the events to find out what diesels can do in performance sports. They realize the trucks used in our classes are not street vehicles since 95% are trailered into the events. The diesel trucks hauling them into the events are burning clean diesel, because they are street vehicles.

If the economy was a bit stronger I think we would see more improvement in activity with the diesel marketplace but I think we are holding our own compared to other motor sports around the country.

Who's on top for diesel performance?

I recently saw a list of the top ten diesel performance leaders for speed and times in drag racing. The top three have not been on the track for at least two years or longer and the others have made these top runs maybe once!

I did see some regulars who run constantly down the track and deserve to be on the list but I did not see some who does deserve to be on there with registered backed up fast runs.

So if the top 3 or 4 have not been on the track for over 2 years does that mean the diesel performance technology has not progressed in over two years? Or that no one has built anything of being worth being mentioned?

If you look at NHRA top runners their speeds progress yearly along with changing vehicles.

What this tells me is the sport still has a long way to go for becoming a mainstream sport, it's all about numbers. It takes huge amount of dollars to build a performance diesel for drag racing and keeping it going. But if the number of people watching these vehicles run does not go up in numbers their dollars will never materialize from sponsors.

I think some of these people are innovative builders who want to excel in diesel performance but their knowledge of attracting major businesses is missing. I talk to a few people at every show and they want to know what it takes to get big name sponsors?

It's about the numbers, exposure and presenting their plea in a business plan that is credible.

So who's on top?  The racers showing up at every event and making multiple passes down the track, getting in front of fans that want to see diesel performance!