What's New at The Drag Racing List

March 17, 1998 -- FINALLY! I have the lists up here. They are in the new format and they are very ROUGH at this point. Still, I felt we needed to get the information up here before it became too dated. The lists contain Pomona, Phoenix, and all the divisional races, plus most other stuff that has happened in 1998 so far. Of course, the Gators just went down and IHRA Bradenton is this weekend. We will get that info in as soon as possible, and we will continue to try to smooth out the presentation of the lists. As noted earlier, we have tried to put the info in a tabular format, but the sheer size of the data is stopping us so far. As you can see, we have radically increased the amount of information for each entry by adding several new fields. We also widened the existing fields to the extent that most abbreviations are things of the past. Browse the lists and see what you can find! We are close to getting a search engine on the site so you can find who you want quickly. For now, happy browsing! bp/drl

March 9, 1998 -- Howdy everyone. Still no lists. Danny has transferred all the info from Pomona and Phoenix (and the divisional races), but we are having some trouble getting them on the web. We have radically expanded the information, as promised, but this is causing us some problems. I tried to upload the lists as tables, both in Excel format and in MS Word format. I did one file in the Excel format-- Top Alcohol Dragster-- and it came out to be SEVEN MEGABYTES BIG! My browser locked up when it had read half of it! This is from a file that is 800K in its ASCII form. I may have to stick with ASCII. I never could get the MS Word tables to work. We added a ton of new stuff to the online lists (driver hometowns, CIDs, owner names and home towns, cc names, etc.) We are not giving up yet! We will try again tomorrow night.

One thing we DID do was fix the download file for the free Match Race Madness PC game. It was set up to download from diskette, and it didn't work for the online download. Sorry to all who attempted it. It will work now. Please try it again. The installation routine is still geared towards the diskette, but it will work anyway. I will update the installation routine soon. Talk to ya soon! bp/drl

March 5, 1998 -- Hi gang. Still working 12 hour days at work. If the energy holds up tonight, I'll try to update all the lists. Still need to weed out a few duplicates and update the format on a few entries before we rank 'em and post 'em.

I was email chatting with pal Tim Woods today. (By the way, Tim, congrats on getting your work into HOT ROD's recent automotive art issue). Tim, one of the top graphic artists in the sport, and I have been talking about updating my Match Race Madness role playing drag race game for about a year. Our busy schedules have not allowed us to do it, however. The game is still pretty much in the state it inhabited when I first wrote it over 12 years ago. It's still fun to play, but there are no graphics and little user interaction. You see an "announcer's screen view" of each race. The cool thing about the game is you can select any current racer from Draglist.com, then create your OWN car, and race against him/her at any of over 300 quarter and eighth mile tracks all around the world. All the math works and the more you race, the quicker you go. Still, it's not really flashy enough to sell anymore. So here's what I'm gonna do...just click on the yellow box on the home page, and you can download your FREE copy of the Match Race Madness drag racing computer game! The game is zipped for quick downloading. Just run a PKUNZIP or WINZIP utility to get to it. Then type MRM and press Enter to install it to your computer. It's easy to begin playing right away, but if you have any questions, drop me a line at bilden@draglist.com. Enjoy!

One last thing-- I've been promising our poor guestbook readers that I would respond to them for about two or three weeks now. I have to apologize again. I am just packed at work, and I've been too beat at night to get up there. If you don't usually check out the guest book, DO check ours out. There are some great notes from hard core drag racers and fans, both absolute drag racing legends and little guys alike. I am just totally blown away by who checks in there. I want to thank each and every one who contributed to our guest book, and I PROMISE to answer each entry as soon as I can! Talk to ya soon! bp/drl

March 4, 1998 -- Hey, everybody. How's it going? Danny has uploaded to me all the info from Pomona and Phoenix and from all the Divisional meets, even the just-completed Division 4 race from Ennis! Now, it's MY job to get them ranked and up here on the page. I recently have expanded the lengths of many of the fields, so you can see more details on your favorite racers. Last night I did that to all of Danny's new info (which he entered under our "old" format). I'm out of bullets tonight, but I plan to have all the lists uploaded tomorrow night (3/5/98). If possible, I also want to load the ENTIRETY of the information we have for each racer. This means hometowns, notes, and other stuff that we have on our databases, but have not put on the website due to space limitations. Well, we are going to give it ALL to you. You may have to scroll off the side of the screen to see it, but you are going to get it ALL! This will represent a "warts and all" display of our information for the first time. You will REALLY see some holes in the info, but that's a GOOD thing. Now you will have even MORE reason to write us and let us know what we are missing! Together, we can build this site into a top-notch reference resource for all of drag racing. Thanks for your patience-- and check back tomorrow! See ya! bp/drl

February 9, 1998 -- Howdy! Just a quick "maintenance release" for early February. We are compiling info from the NHRA Winternationals and will have the lists updated soon. We made several modifications to the layout and design of the site this week. Note the new "buttons" on the front page. These will allow easier movement around the site. We also added a new Drag Racing Bookstore in association with AMAZON.COM-- the world's biggest bookstore! It contains several out-of-print titles, which AMAZON.COM says they will try to find if orders arrive. I have a feeling we are about to give them more orders for nostalgia drag racing books than they can imagine! We also have a brand new Danny's Corner column in the house! Danny White has written about the myriad combinations that raced in the Pro Comp class of 1974. Check out the new Danny's Corner article and tell us what you think! A final note: best of luck to Bill Bader and the new IHRA. I made my first trip in 14 years to Norwalk last August and I was totally blown away by the place. If Bill can bring some of that stuff to the entire tour, the "big I" will be something to see! See ya! bp/drl

January 23, 1998 -- (but just two weeks old!) -- (but just two weeks old!) -- Hi everybody! Welcome to the January 1998 installment of Draglist.com and I have worked hard to get most of the final tidbits from 1997 entered. We also have continued to receive outstanding and much-appreciated updates from retired racers. Of course, Danny continues to dig through drag racing's past, and we continue to get outstanding updates from current racers all over the world, including many more Draglist Reader's Rides.