The former crew chief for the Miss GEICO Offshore Racing team and a member of its ownership group, Supercat Rigging principal and Doug Wright Powerboats racing director Gary Stray, has worn many hats during the years. Stray worked with the dominant Victory team Class 1 outfit for much of the 1990s. He followed that up with nine years of rigging MTI and his 12-year stint with the Miss GEICO group. Stray’s resume as a world-class innovator, offshore raceboat rigger and set-up man is unquestioned
And yet his newest role, that of technical director for the International Hot Rod Association Offshore Powerboat Series, could end up being his most challenging one yet. Despite its long history in the automobile drag-racing world, the IHRA is new to the sport. From technical and racing rules to safety-team mandates, its essential infrastructure is still in formation. Bumps in the road are as certain as they are unavoidable.
To learn more about what Stay’s new position means and how he will approach it, I caught him with earlier this week. Here’s what he had to say.
Technical director for IHRA. This is a new one for you. How goes it so far?
(Laughs) Yeah, mate, it is. It’s going well, really. I am in the process of assembling a group of very good people for our team, young people who at the top of their game to be part of it. And I have been in meetings with people from Mercury Racing, MoTeC and MSD. I’m excited.
So what is your role and goal?
To make sure we have proper, level playing field. As soon as someone wins in this sport, the first thing you hear is, “That guy is cheating.” We want to eliminate that issue with technology rather than all the “he said, she said” stuff that usually transpires and never reaches a proper conclusion. I have a pretty good idea of what we can do to eliminate that.
Sounds like a tall order. Where do you start?
To be completely honest, right now are biggest priorities are with the Super Cat class. Super Cat is the most difficult spec-class to police from a technical side because of the engines are built by various independent engine builders. Of the money I will be spending on developing technologies to enforce the technical rules, 60 percent of it will probably be devoted to Super Cat. The rest will go to the other classes. But the solutions exist and they are technological.
The technical rules have not been released yet. How do you do that?
They’re close to being finished and they should be going out shortly, but I have them in their current state. But of course I have them as they are right now.
Is there an overriding philosophy to your approach?
Absolutely, mate. First, we are going to treat everyone equally. Second, we are going to analyze everything using science and technology. No more he said, she said. And third, when we discover an infraction we are going to deal with it pretty harshly. We need to eliminate cheating and even the suspicion of cheating from the sport.