Captnmike

BenPerfected,

What you always hear when you ask a forner racer why they are not racing anymore is that they want to race "their" boat at wide open. Most do not want to throttle back to hold a speed. Second, they want a fair chance at winning, it's not that fun knowing you don't have a fair shot because someone is winning every race.

We have been looking at the wrong model for the sports success. Look at drag racing not nascar.

Strong pro classes, heads up racings...like offshore pro classes.

Entry level classes where any and every one has a chance. This is how you build fan base. When you have a fan base, then you can market to sponsors.

Mike

Cincinnati Race

Ben,

Great Ideas - hopefully we can all work towards moving the sport forward. You can tell you spent some time on it, keep working at it. Hope to see you in Cincy (we are offering B Class, maybe you could get the whole group to come down.

TLee

OffshoreOnly

Great to see many great ideas and meeting of the minds rather than dagger throwing. You all are headed in the right direction. Well said Gregg.

Ron P

I love the idea of bringing technology onto the race course. But it would destroy those wonderful line ups at the start. The technology exists to track boats but not in real time. There's at least a minute delay. Track racing can embed receivers in the track and read the car's transponder as it goes over the receivers. Can't do that in water.

Here's how to fix P class. (is it broken?)

Racers need to start by building a boat to fit a specific class.. that's it. The problem is guys that own a fast boat and decided to race. They usually run a boat at the bottom of the speed bracket and can't compete. Look at Wazzup and Augie's boat. They are dialed into the max speed for the class. Last year OPA had some great racing in all classes. Maybe that's because OPA compresses all boats into one of 5 classes.

Also, 25 boats makes for a good race when there are only 5 classes. Maybe people don't like the term P Class, maybe that's the real problem.

Here is how things fit in OPA.

P1 = Super Cat - fast cats, fast Vs
P2 = Super Cat Lite - Pro Stock, and Big Bad Blown Apaches and Outerlimits
P3 = Super V - B Class, F2
P4 = Super V Lite - A Class, F1
P5 = Boats that run under 70 with single I/O or twin O/B

SuperCats run with OPA, they just run in P1 class.

Look on the APBA site. There are 5 classes that all had an average speed between 74 and 77mph. Shouldn't they all be in one class racing against each other?

The problem is there are too many classes with speeds that are almost identical. Reduce the classes and increase the boat count per class, thus increasing the fun factor for the racers.

Just 2 cents from the peanut gallery.

shifter

Can someone copy the word pad doc. it is bombing on my computer and I would like to read it.
Thanks,
pat W

merlin540

this is why i am taking the year off and just watching. i love racing and love to build my engines to race and run on the edge and have had good times and bad but not being able to run a boat to its full potential like my 32 skater was run when it ran modified in the 90's isnt any fun for me. dont take that wrong but i wanted to run in px and with the events so far this year i think i understand why they wouldnt let me do it. i am saving my money and i am going to build a supercat. se ya charlie amann

SMYTH1

to bring offshore racing to the next level you need somthing people want to see.ocean races,people want to see these boats flying through the air and hear motors screaming.need more than 30 boats.need all boats together.which i know will never happen.if 5 or more of those boats break its all over.i,ve watched many races myself and have been bored out of my mind towards the end.when you have a show poeple want to see the rest will fall into place.fans first, tv, then sponsors in that order

Captnmike

Ron P

I agree the starts are exciting, thats why we save them in the pro classes

If you get the chance look at the new tracking from nextel...you do a snapshot at the time of start and so long as you are reasonably close to here you are supposed to be and not moving fast. It can be called a good start. If you have several boats claiming same speed, adjust the coarse length so they are near the start finish boat.

to everyone to start at the same time, at 3 minutes all patrol and turn boats start waving flags of some kind. At start all boats shot of flares, I think I have a years supply of outdated flares. That would look cool to the fans.

Start 15+-, boats 5+- break, 5 miss the setup, 5 battle for the checked on the last laps. That would look coll to the fans too.

BenP,

I talked allot with fellow factory one racers the past weekend. We talked about rules very close to what you are proposing. Call it spirit of competition rule. Add weight reduce pitch etc. after winning to reduce the dominance of one boat. A quote from this weekend end from a racer, "I would rather finish second out of six, than first out of two". I think this year in silver cup it pays the same.

Mike Sadlon

RMS Super V #2

If we put half as much energy into fixing bruised egos and introducing common sense to Racers who can't seem to let go of the past to promote and acheive unification of the Sanctioning Bodies, as we do trying to "patchwork quilt" all the classes together, the problem being discussed in this thread solves itself.

Gregg Reichman

Captnmike

Gregg,

In my experience racers, for the most part, will race where they think they have a fair and reasonable chance of winning. That is why racers race,for the thrill of victory. The first organization that addresses that, and the chance to at lest pay back expenses, note that i did not say make money, that with never happen for everyone in this sport.

Then unification will start to happen, over time.