The deciding factor to shorten the runs was to pick up stopping distance at tracks where there was no more room---Scott Kalidda got killed because he hit a piece of heavy equipment--
The issue of losing blowers or other parts was simply a $$$ decision by the teams for if they needed to run that hard against who ever was in the other lane and usually one would only do it if he had enough parts to rebuild for the next round--
We always only ran our car to about the 1000 ft area and shut off(but no braking or chute) til the 1320 mark--our speeds were generally in the 208-212 area doing this and when we had to would run in the high 220's( 230 was a big number back then) We held the NHRA national record as well as the track records at most of the tracks we ran and once ran low et at 14 events in a row---We had a lot of basicly single runs as over half of the competitors red lighted against us and the others melted down and/or popped the blowers. Our driver was habitually late against about everybody he ran (watching for there red lite) and our highest mph runs were those that he was chasing down someone.
The mph back then was measured over 130 feet , 65 before and 65 past the 1320 mark so the shut off early runs had low numbers and running it out the back door meant driving it way past the finish line for big numbers here as now the speed is done prior to the finish line---
