FORGET what you might have been told: There are actually three certainties in life.

Death, Taxes and Motorsport making stupid decisions to spite itself.

The latest comes from the world of Drag Racing, which after years of anonymity had appeared to have found a shining light in the new Burson Auto Parts Australian Top Fuel Championship, which launched a few weeks ago at Sydney Dragway.

Now my spectacles may be tinted a shade of rose, but I remember Drag Racing being something of A Big Deal when I was younger.

Don’t get me wrong, I was all about Formula One and Touring Cars but even with a passing interest in the straight-line stuff, it was hard to avoid.

Victor Bray was a household name in most families with a passing interest in motorsport, such was the popularity of the jocular Tomato farmer from Queensland and his Castrol ’57 Chevy.

There were the Cowins, the Reads and Rachelle Splatt and massive crowds at Calder, Willowbank, Adelaide International and a myriad of other tracks around the nation. Attendances rivalled Touring Car rounds. There were posters, promotions at auto parts stores, TV coverage and more.

But then there were the tough times. Eastern Creek stopped hosting Drag Racing and the biggest market in Australia was without a track for some time. Bob Jane was.. well.. Bob Jane and argued with most people which put paid to ANDRA Racing at his tracks in Melbourne and Adelaide.

Through it all Willowbank and the new Motorplex in Perth chipped away and Sydney ultimately got their track built next to Eastern Creek, but the sport lost the shine it had during what was a rollicking 1990s, and to this point hadn’t recovered.

There was a brief period of boom time when ONE HD appeared on the scene in 2009 and threw cash and resources at sport – their coverage of Drag Racing was the best it’d ever seen. But that too failed to last more than a few seasons.

So Drag Racing slunk back into its niche’, a corner of the sport became less and less visible as the sanctioning body ANDRA and US-based interloper the IHRA battled for control over circuits and competitors.

Of course, a rival ‘400 Thunder’ series was set up by the latter to counter the formers offering. That, too, basically disappeared.

And now, after launching with fireworks and lights and fire and genuine hype, and in front of a crowd that would give 90% of Australian Motorsport Promoters a dollar-sign generated climax, Drag Racing’s potential for a new era has been railroaded by politics, ego and from what I can tell, utter stupidity.

Typical.

Jeez it riles me up and our sport is so bloody good at doing it over and over again.

I’ll admit, I don’t know an enormous amount about Drag Racing. I enjoy it, of course, and like many people my first experience of watching a Top Fuel car run will remain with me until well beyond the point where my disintegrated bones are dug from the ground to become my great grandkids’ alternate energy source.

And honestly, the most Drag Racing I’ve watched in the last few years is of Cleetus McFarland racing his body-less Corvette on You Tube. (It’s tremendous).

But the potential of a well-organised, promoted and perhaps most importantly, well-supported Top Fuel series with more than two or three cars running grabbed my attention. It was about time.

Except it’s been derailed; partly by Covid and the West’s refusal to open their borders, but moreso in this instance by Sydney Dragway and the respective sanctioning bodies, ANDRA and the IRHA, having their own private little battle over who has control over the Sydney venue. Which, by the way, because of a lack of other options at the moment is critical to the sport.

Like the IndyCar split, like the two-litre versus five-litre war over Bathurst, like so many other examples of our sport treading over its own anatomy, here’s another example of motorsport shooting itself in the foot. Or in this case, it’s future.

Unlike the IndyCar split, which saw NASCAR running all the way to the bank with their TV ratings, sponsors and crowds, there are no winners out of this particular schism – the details of which I don’t understand and honestly, have no real interest in doing so either.

But I get the gist: It’s a battle for control and it’s documented fact that they generally never end well – or leave a trail of destruction along the way before they do.

It’s just another instance of the sport doing something dumb when it should be doing something great. Like an exciting, well-promoted and supported new Top Fuel Championship, for example…

Fortunately and entirely selfishly for me, the one thing this drama can’t do (it’d better not, anyway) is stop the Fuel cars from running at the Merlin Darwin Triple Crown this June, which they plan to do, under lights, once the Supercars are done for the day.

On the basis that I manage to beg, borrow or steal a start line pass from series co-promoter (and our Supercars Media boss) Mr. Prendergast, you will find me there, parked behind 20,000 horsepower waiting anxiously for their concussive force to remove the breath from my lungs before giving me by far and away the most satisfying 3.8-ish seconds of my current nightlife program.

But I’m a lucky one that gets to go to Darwin because it’s somewhat ironic that one of the most remote circuits in the country is, at the moment, one of the few actually able to host this excellent new series in the first place.

Until then, all I can say is this: get your crap together, Drag Racing.

Learn from the mistakes of the past to not miss an opportunity smacking you right in the face.

Get it together so the people actually doing something good for the sport can get on with it and, rather than treading water, finally move it forward an inch or two.

If you do, I’ll be the first one at the gate with my money and the first one watching on the TV, to celebrate the start of a return to those glory days of old.

PHOTO: Courtesy Top Fuel Australia Facebook Page