AI invades drag racing reporting

Check out the latest In Memoriam posting on the NHRA.com website. It's fairly accurate factually, but was either written by an AI content generator, or someone who doesn't know much about drag racing. Normally, these postings are written by National Dragster's Senior Editor, Phil Burgess, but this article about the passing of Rich Guasco was simply attributed to NHRA "Staff".

Compounding the poorly written article was the reposting of it on Competition Plus. The byline read by Bobby Bennett, but all he did was shorten the article, fix a few grammatical errors, but no attempt was made to convert the prose into something that would hold the interest of any serious drag racer or fan. All in all, a sad effort to memorialize a great, hard-core drag racer like Guasco.

IHRA follows through with two major track purchases

After a series of overly optimistic and premature announcements about the purchase of seven drag strips earlier in the year, the IHRA has legitimately finalized a deal for National Trail Raceway (Hebron, OH) and Milan Dragway (Milan, MI). The news first broke on the IHRA website, then was reported on Drag Race Central, but it's not yet been confirmed on the track websites. That's not surprising as most dragstrip websites are poorly maintained, if at all.

Further credence for the purchase announcements was given by the almost simultaneous relocation of the JEGS NHRA Sportsnationals to South Georgia Motor Sports Park from it's previous home at National Trail Raceway. The bottom line is that it looks like things are starting to move forward at the IHRA as we count down the weeks until their first major event in late June, and their first national event in mid-July.