Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2003 | 9:53 a.m.
Citing a lack of sponsorship and increased costs relating to recent NHRA rules changes, George Marnell of Las Vegas said he is retiring from Pro Stock competition.
Marnell, 53, will walk away from a 10-year Pro Stock career in which he won two national events in one of the most competitive professional classes in the NHRA Powerade Drag Racing Series.
" I had a lot of fun doing it for a long time," Marnell said. "It's just time to put it aside for a while. Right now, I have everything up for sale and we'll just go from there."
Marnell lost his primary sponsor, Matco Tools, at the end of this season and said it was going to be even more expensive to remain competitive in the category next year because of the rules changes.
"I've been doing this a long time and it seems like the sponsorship thing is getting even more difficult all the time," Marnell said. "I just didn't feel like I wanted to run the entire program on my dollar. That was one of the key factors and the other thing was, because of what NHRA did (with rules changes) right at the last second, it kind of put us under the gun for next year."
"First of all, the tires that they have dictated for us to use don't even fit underneath the (Pontiac) Grand Am, so that means the bodywork has to altered on the car in order to get them where they'll even fit. Now that we've got a tire that's going to be larger than what we're used to, it's going to change the gear ratios completely; it's going to take every bit of information that we have gathered over the last 10 years and you can throw it right out the window because none of it's going to be the same."
Marnell estimated the expense of changing the car's body and stepping up his winter testing program to be in excess of $200,000.
"It was just one thing after another after another and I just decided that maybe now was a good time to go do something else," said Marnell, who finished a career-low 23rd in Pro Stock points this season. "I said I would (keep racing) until I'm not having fun and with the way things were going, I just wasn't having fun."
After competing part-time in the Pro Stock ranks in 1993, Marnell committed to a fulltime NHRA racing program in 1994 and earned his first number-one qualifying position a year later. Marnell won his first NHRA national event in 2001 in Memphis and then won the 2002 season opener at Pomona (Calif.) Raceway. Those were Marnell's only two final-round appearances in 223 career races.
"Qualifying number one was a big deal for me and then, of course, winning races -- those were the highlights," Marnell said. "There's nothing like winning a Pro Stock race; they're just so competitive and it's just so hard to obtain that when you finally do, it's overwhelming. It was one of the highlights of my life, let alone my racing career.
"There are guys who have raced their whole lives in Pro Stock that have never won a race. That's quite an accomplishment and we did it a couple of times, so that was fantastic for us."
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