The first special-edition site, www.usnationals.com, was developed to cover that year's Big Go as a stand-alone site and featured daily trivia quizzes (with prizes) and historic video clips and photos. Most important, it marked the debut of the first live audiocast over the Internet. The format was repeated for the 1998 Winternationals. \

1998: Team reports and custom results; April Foolishness
The feature now known as Team Reports made its debut in 1998 (example); Chevrolet and Pontiac submitted driver notes from its teams, and racers such as Del Worsham, Gary Densham, and Paul Romine were among the first to capitalize on the free ink. The NHRA web team also linked event-relevant stories from this page. The event-preview pages (example) also became a little more streamlined.

The 1998 Madison event also marked the debut, in beta form, of the current race-results format, which allows fans to select by class, by day, or both; it made its official debut at the next event, in Denver, albeit with a horrid color palette that thankfully was replaced at season's end.

Here's a look at a typical 1998 home page, complete with retro logos.

1998 also marked the debut of one of NHRA.com's most popular annual traditions, the April Fool's edition. The first edition was prompted by submissions from Photoshop maestro Jim Billups, a fan who took some liberties with photos on the website to create realistic -- if far-out -- visions of race cars, including rear-engine Funny Cars and Pro Stockers, six-wheeled Top Fuelers, and more. Under the byline I.M. Soshure, Burgess crafted a report of "top-secret test sessions" to accompany the images, and many visitors were taken hook, line, and sinker, which only encouraged the staff. It's been a yearly tradition since, with good-natured jabs taken at many top racers and fans still biting hard on the fictitious stories.

1999: Improved race-day coverage, Geiger comes aboard

Rob Geiger

Beginning in 1999, NHRA.com offered in-depth day-by-day race recaps to supplement the results statistics, beginning with the Winternationals, and launched a search for a dedicated editorial writer. Until that point, Burgess had been writing and editing most of the content while continuing his full-time role as National DRAGSTER editor. Fate dealt NHRA a kind hand. Rob Geiger, who had been doing publicity for Pennzoil racers such as Eddie Hill and Mike Thomas for the previous year, suddenly became available. Having been impressed with his professionalism, news-gathering ability, fluid writing skills, and knack of making friends everywhere he went, Burgess hired him immediately, much to the still-ongoing delight of NHRA.com readers. Whereas many times the event summary had been written based on stats, Geiger attended every race – as he has now for 163 consecutive events – and penned his observations and obtained quotes from the drivers independent of the racers' publicists.

More photo galleries began to be posted from most events. Initially, the photos were supplied by Pontiac and Pennzoil of just their drivers — remember, this is long before everyone had a digital camera — but by year's end, NHRA was able to offer daily photo galleries at select events.

The year ended on a downer when Roe returned to Ohio to accept a position closer to his family as webmaster for the growing Jeg's Mail Order site.

The 1999 home page began to take on some familiar elements, such as the audiocast link and other event information.

2000: We Have Ignition (and a new name and webmaster)

Brent Friar spent more than five years as NHRA's second webmaster.

NHRA launched into the new century with a new slogan, "We Have Ignition," and creating a new web design to match the catchphrase was one of the first tasks for new webmaster Brent Friar, who brought with him an eager attitude, lots of experience, and a wide-ranging skill set. The new site had a Flash introduction at the top of the page, fancy hierarchal menus, and other gee-whiz goodies (example). The site name also was changed from NHRA Online to NHRA.com after a protracted battle with several parties who had registered the domain name and refused to hand it over to NHRA's control.

A bold, new black design was implemented and carried out site-wide, as evidenced by the Winternationals coverage.

Mike Fischbeck, who ironically had applied for the webmaster position as well, was instead hired to shoot new and improved photo galleries, taking visitors from the starting line to the pits and everywhere between at all races on the tour (he also later gained fame for stopping a thief trying to make off with one of Pro Stock racer Warren Johnson's car doors at the 2001 Atlanta event).

In June 2000, NHRA.com launched its first special mini website, a special section devoted to John Force's pursuit of Bob Glidden's all-time mark of 85 wins. John Force: Chasing the Record chronicled his race to the record with a rolling count-up image that changed with every win until Force finally scored his 86^th Wally at that year's Chicago event. Included were a voluminous amount of stats on Force's wins, charting everything from wins by state, age, and car make to qualifying positions and more.

Throughout the year, work also was heavily under way in preparation for the 2001 season, which would mark NHRA's 50^th anniversary. Burgess and Friar hatched an ambitious plan to chronicle the 50 years through reprints of old news articles from each of the years as they had been printed in National DRAGSTER. Burgess pored through thousands of issues of ND for the 10 most important or interesting news stories of the years, which were then either scanned (using optical character recognition software, which often had trouble reading the older issues) or retyped by hand. Burgess also read dozens of early issues of Hot Rod Magazine to fill in NHRA's history from before the 1960 launch of National DRAGSTER, working with NHRA founder Wally Parks to create the most accurate portrayal of the 1950s NHRA scene ever published.

Late in the year, NHRA ended its long relationship with goracing.com, which had been acquired by Action Performance, and moved its website to an outside host, AT&T.

2001: Celebrating the 50^th, mourning 9/11 losses
The 50^th Anniversary site went live and, with it, the ambitious venture of naming the Top 50 Drivers of NHRA's first 50 years. Burgess had assembled an all-star panel of the sport's top journalists, historians, and commentators to vote for the top 50, whose identities were revealed a week at a time on NHRA.com.

During the course of the year, NHRA.com chronicled events surrounding the golden anniversary, such as a reunion of original NHRA officers at the spot where NHRA was first incorporated in 1951, NHRA Day in Los Angeles, which was highlighted by Frank Hawley taking L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan for a spin down Los Angeles Street in his two-seater dragster, and, of course, a special third event at Pomona Raceway, the Pep Boys 50^th Anniversary Nationals.

After much disappointment with its AT&T hosting arrangement, NHRA.com partnered with Primedia's GR8RIDE family of websites, which promised to provide hosting, design, and online advertising and sales solutions for NHRA.com, allowing the site to handle the massive traffic that had developed as the site's popularity – and the popularity of the Internet itself – continued to grow.

The site got another facelift complete with an exciting Flash movie and menu system created by Friar and the vehicle of a randomly loaded drag racing hero in the top left corner. (Note: This archived page will not display 100 percent correctly as some coding is missing, but all elements are present.)

Also early that year, the web team launched a stand-alone site for the NHRA Sport Compact Series that featured news and racing results from that popular segment of the sport. Through necessity, Burgess became the editor of the site and throughout the years worked to forge alliances with other sport compact sites such as UrbanRacer.com to get NHRA's foot in the door with racers and up to speed on technology and personalities.

The world was shaken Sept. 11, 2001, by the devastating terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. NHRA.com quickly designed a logo to remember those who lost their lives that day, a button that ran the remainder of the year and linked NHRA.com visitors to more information about how to donate money and other items to various charity organizations. Racers shared their sentiments with NHRA.com visitors, and Racers For Christ Chaplain Ken Owen offered words of advice on how to cope with the tragedy.

At year's end, "Big Daddy" Don Garlits edged John Force for the top spot in the Top 50 Drivers final list. Few people, including Force, could argue with the results.

2002: Site blue, Forever Red, Notebook read; division sites added
The site underwent another redesign in June, switching to a predominantly blue format that stayed until early 2005. Two now-popular features, the NHRA.com poll and Fast Talk quotes, were added to the site along with a long-overdue Search function. (Quick fact: To date, the site has featured more than 260 polls.)

Another new mini section was launched in January devoted to Kenny Bernstein's Forever Red retirement tour; it included Bernstein's personal reflections on his most memorable outings in each venue plus head-to-head records, stats, and more.

That July, the popular NHRA.com Notebook was launched (original page) to bridge the big gap between legitimate front-page news stories and trivial notes of all sorts that otherwise might not have had a home.

Perhaps the biggest project of the year was the introduction of websites for each of NHRA's seven divisions, which also were launched late in the year. Hosting all of the websites in-house allowed implementation of a user-friendly content-management system (CMS) that enabled division personnel to add content without having to know HTML. Friar handbuilt a compact CMS that worked until NHRA purchased a full-blown program the following year.

2003: More sites added
As NHRA discovered new ways to market its programs on the Internet, the web team (still consisting primarily of Burgess and Friar for day-to-day operations and Geiger churning out compelling feature stories) was charged with building sites to promote NHRA's Street Legal program and the Disney Channel movie about Jr. drag racer Erica Enders, Right on Track, which was linked from the extremely popular Disney Channel website.

In February, NHRA moved its website to Ultimate Internet Access, a local hosting company that for the previous four years had proven itself by providing Internet services to the NHRA main and satellite offices. UIA had the redundant telecom partners NHRA required, and its staff was knowledgeable and local.

In April, the web team completed work on a stand-alone site for the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum presented by the Automobile Club of Southern California, which previously had been part of the main site. The beautiful design was the first on the site by talented graphic designer Todd Myers, whose work continues to be featured on NHRA.com's current look as well as other special sites launched since then.

With the division sites firmly entrenched, NHRA decided it was time to bring in-house the websites for its owned tracks: Atlanta Dragway, Gainesville Raceway, Indianapolis Raceway Park, National Trail Raceway, and Pomona Raceway. Planning began that year, and, because many of the sites were complex, much coordination with track personnel was required to get the projects under way. Pomona was the first finished, followed by National Trail and Gainesville. The Indy and Atlanta sites were completed in 2005.

NHRA also rolled out a special website devoted to its Jr. Drag Racing League, featuring news, information, and results from the series.

Fischbeck was replaced by Ken Sklute and Racers Edge Photography at the Phoenix event as the NHRA.com event photographer, a position that he and Bob Hesser continue to hold to this date.

2004: Special event sites added

The 2004 season also marked the creation of two more special websites, saluting the 50^th Anniversary Mac Tools U.S. Nationals and the 40^th Anniversary Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals. Both contained voluminous histories of the event, including stats, stories, and photos, plus a database-driven driver search for past winners. Both were designed by Myers, coded by Friar, and researched by Burgess, along with invaluable help from staffer/historian Todd Veney. Lorraine Vestal, NHRA's managing editor of special projects, began to offer her immense organizational skills to the team to keep the projects on track, and she continues to work with the team today. These sites brought to 16 the number of full-time and ongoing sites administered by the team and pushed past 20 the number of combined websites created.

The team also had the sad duty in midyear of creating a special mini site devoted to the passing of popular Top Fuel star Darrell Russell that was updated throughout the year with news about services, reflections, and benefit events.

2005: New members section, new sheriff in town
After five incredible years, Friar announced in January that he was leaving NHRA to work for Top Fuel racer Doug Herbert to help develop e-commerce solutions for Herbert's mail-order business, though he agreed to stay on as a consultant until the new webmaster was hired.

Friar's last official duty was the completion of another extremely ambitious project, a special section for NHRA members that was launched in February and gave NHRA members the ability to access special features and listen to national event audiocasts for three days instead of just the traditional Sunday-only program. Members were now able to find events and tracks near them based on ZIP code, communicate with NHRA's Membership Services department, and much more, and racers also had custom points tracking. It was a major project, fraught with complications and enhanced security features, but the section launched successfully and registrations have been impressive.

Current NHRA.com webmaster Jade Davidson

After an exhaustive search involving dozens of qualified candidates, NHRA found its new webmaster in Jade Davidson, who had vast experience with similar racing sites, including the popular RaceFan site, which offers complete motorsports news and results. He also had worked with Valvoline, Primedia, NASCAR, USAC, and ASA Racing before joining the team in late May.

Other new features were added in 2005, including the immensely popular Geiger Counter, authored by (of course) Geiger, which debuted in April (and already has nearly 100 entries), and the NHRA.com blog, which opened in April to keep visitors abreast of new features and other site-related news. The team also opened its salute to Warren Johnson's final full season behind the wheel for his School's Out tour, tracking his season to date and sharing his memories from the tracks along the NHRA tour.

The season also proved to be among the frustrating because traffic, driven by various methods, including a partnership with ESPN.com, surged by 30 percent, overwhelming NHRA's database servers. NHRA CIO Doug Caton and the NHRA Information Technology department, assisted by Davidson and Friar, spent hours optimizing tens of thousands of lines of code, and Caton purchased a powerful new SQL server to meet traffic needs well into the future. The final work was completed last week, ensuring a happy 10^th birthday for motorsports' first full-time site and ensuring its continuing legacy.

Related article(s):

• NHRA.com logos over the years (07/26/2005)
  
• The early days of online reporting (07/26/2005)
  
• Recalling the roots of NHRA.com (07/26/2005)
  
• NHRA.com: Recollections and looking forward (07/26/2005)
  

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