Racers want to win. I don't think that anyone gets too pumped up about aiming for runner-up. To be a winner today requires pushing the envelope in every aspect of racing, including building your car to the very limit of the rulebook. If a particular modification is permitted in your class rules, and you don't do it, you can be sure that some of the other class competitors will, and they will have a potential advantage.

There are racers, however, who may push the envelope a little beyond the rulebook. Some may call this cheating (for lack of a better or more appropriate word) but I don't. In my mind, cheating is more of a blatant deception. For instance, if a racer lies about his displacement to gain an advantage, or sneaks in some nitrous in a non-power adder class, I call that cheating. In these cases, the racer knows full well that he is breaking the rules.

On the other hand, if a racer takes advantage of a "gray" area, I wouldn't necessarily call him a cheat. A racer who chooses to remove his outside mirrors for instance, or maybe the windshield wiper blades is just trying to get an edge, particularly if the rulebook doesn't specifically deal with these areas. Trying to gain and edge is the racers job. I wouldn't expect anything less from a dedicated racer. If the sanctioning organization (the rules maker) has a problem with any of these gray areas, they need to firm up the rulebook in black and white.

Actually, when you think about it, the majority of the cheating these days is not coming from the racers, it's coming from the sanctioning organizations. Here are three ways that the sanctioning bodies can cheat the racers. First, the rulebook. If the rules are not well defined or leave a lot to interpretation, the racer is being cheated. Or, let's assume that the rulebook is well written, but the tech officials overlook the rules or do a shoddy tech inspection, the racer is being cheated. And finally, if the sanctioning organization plays favorites with some of the "big name players", in effect allowing them to run with a knowingly illegal car in order to get some promotional value, the racers are being cheated.

In essence, there would be no racer cheating if the sanctioning organizations didn't allow it. In my opinion, it's almost the racers job to "cheat" or at least to push the envelope to the max, and it's the sanctioning organization's job to maintain the integrity (in-tech-rity?) of the rulebook and not let it happen.

One of the reasons that NASCAR has such a good reputation is that the tech inspectors don't let anyone get away with anything. They check everything. They don't spare anybody, no matter how "big" their name is. That's called in-tech-rity. Does your drag racing sanctioning organization have this kind of integrity?