George, the investment in the car is beyond insane. But it has been getting that way for a lot of years. As I've said before, my annual, net (after taxes) pay at Purdue would barely buy one rear shock for one of today's Pro Stockers. And yes, I said just one rear shock. A decent, bottom-half-qualifying, Pro Stock engine program is about $1,000,000, annually. Want to qualify in the top half, then add at least another $500,000. If you want to try to lease an engine, you're in the vicinity of $30K - $35K, per race. A used Pro Stock roller is going for around $70K.
Valve spring replacement costs are so high, a lot of racers are lobbying for pneumatic spring control, ala F-1. Personally, I think the rules are going to have to allow multiple valves per cylinder, before pneumatic control will ever become viable. I just don't see how you could ever manage a large enough pneumatic bucket, to control those huge valves, at those kinds of lift numbers. There is a lot of rumor floating around that Pro Stock may get a valve lift maximum limit and a new rev limiter rule for 2015. I think a 10,500 RPM limiter was proposed for 2014 and was beaten down, so maybe rumors are just rumors. The ballet with springs for those motors is Catch 22, because a spring big enough to do the job is not capable of controlling its own mass, so you are constantly walking a fine line of having enough spring to control the valve, without having too much spring to control itself.
Add in the expense of a truck and trailer, and remember if you are going to hit many races a year, you will beat a dualie to death in a couple years time. There goes $250K - $300K. Fuel expense for the truck, fuel permits for the truck, insurance for the truck are not cheap. And if you don't have living quarters in the truck/trailer, be prepared for stupidly-high motel expenses at each race.
And unless you can throw endless dollars into dyno testing and track testing (which is where most teams spend the bulk of their budgets), then you are going to need at least two cars, in order to get enough data to run the cars well.
Pro Stock is quickly going the way of the dodo bird, unless you have the financial resources of someone like Ken Black. And how many billions of dollars did Johnny Gray sell the family oil company for?
I know of at least a couple teams running A/Fuel Dragsters, simply because the programs are less expensive than trying to run a Comp Eliminator program.
And to think we built our A/ED in a one-car garage, and towed it with a 6-cylinder, three-speed 1/2 ton pickup. Yes, those days are long gone.
Color me impressed. Very impressed. And what is really scary is I've heard some rumor that Mihovetz made that run at BB/AT weight, rather than at AA/AT. If that is the case, I really take my hat off to the man, as that means there is a lot left in there.
