MOBILEMERCMAN
Founding Member / Competitor
George with the IMCO boat lives in your area.
Headlines
The Great Unification
- Thread starter stevequick
- Start date
George with the IMCO boat lives in your area.
Sean Stinson
Founding Member/Contributor
So the way I see it right now that the general consensus of all with the exception of a few is "Why Bother, It will never work".....So that's the position everyone is going to hold firm at??????
XtremeRacing
Competitor
Steve,
You make some very valid point, I guess we need to look back at history and try not to make the same mistakes.
You make some very valid point, I guess we need to look back at history and try not to make the same mistakes.
Steve Miklos
Charter Member / Competitor
Exactly! Nothing has been learned so this situation (or something similar) will happen over and over again. The racers need to realize they are lucky to have a place to race their equipment.
Most racers spend half of their time wishing a competing circuit will fail rather then supporting the sport. With the OSS crowd "United we race" always has strings attached.
Steve
Most racers spend half of their time wishing a competing circuit will fail rather then supporting the sport. With the OSS crowd "United we race" always has strings attached.
Steve
Steve Miklos
Charter Member / Competitor
Well as you know Mike and I and some others sure tried. After that Bob Bull tried. Before that Gene Whipp.
Steve
Steve Miklos
Charter Member / Competitor
I know and trust George well. He also knows how a Vortec runs as he has raced one in his boat.
Steve
Wahoo 214
Charter Member
There needs to be an Owner, call it Corp America, that will contract with the sites to create the series. The racers are signed to a contract so they have to compete for say 3 years. That is probably the best you can get.
Steve Miklos
Charter Member / Competitor
Sounds good but the contract would be very hard to enforce. In F1 auto racing you post a bond and lose it if you miss a race. In F1 the TV rights pay out well (although Bernie keeps a good bit).
If you needed to post a bond the barrier to entry would be higher so quality would cost quantity.
I had proposed in 2001 when we had 15 +- Supercat teams. To limit it to 10. The first ten who registered for the year (paid all entry fees up front). Would be granted a Supercat franchise.
The thought was it would create a value for a team not just the equipment (boat). If you wanted in Supercat you would have to buy a team. If you were to stop participating you lost your franchise.
Steve
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Ratickle
Founding Member / Super Moderator
Can't you just download the ECM official program at the race the day of/day before?
For all ECM's?
Sean Stinson
Founding Member/Contributor
exactly, exactly, exactly (spoken as loud as I can say it)
Sean Stinson
Founding Member/Contributor
That would take care of potential boycotts
Steve Miklos
Charter Member / Competitor
Steve, are you interested in racing in Sunny Isle? We would like to acomidate you if we can. Please e-mail me what you think would be fair. I need to propose this to the class. I am willing to listen if you want. It seems the SVL teams still racing want to race as many boats as possable.
MD
MD
S
SHARKEY-IMAGES
Guest
I recall racing my BULLET 130 in the APBA OPC E-Production class and they would make a custom color with multiple colors of nail polish to seal all of the key parts of the powerhead. Can this not be done here as well after all of the ECM's were put in place ? Seal the connections....
I had the same argument with the Powerboat P1 a few years ago. The connections I heard were not sealed leaving someone an open opportunity to cheat... I understand they made that one of the changes for the following year as there was some speculation of some funny business going on....
Seal 'em all up I say !!! :sifone:
I had the same argument with the Powerboat P1 a few years ago. The connections I heard were not sealed leaving someone an open opportunity to cheat... I understand they made that one of the changes for the following year as there was some speculation of some funny business going on....
Seal 'em all up I say !!! :sifone:
Steve Miklos
Charter Member / Competitor
Fever Mike
Charter Member
+1 on this...I tried along with these guys. I crewed, I raced and I was a tech inspector/official for APBA. I also came up with and wrote the P-Class rules which just basically gave L-Class direction and rules to go by and let the sancationing body make the decesions instead of the local boat club. I believe this class has turned into one of if not the most succesful class in offshore racing in recent years. I took my tech/official job seriously and tried to grow this sport. I tried to do my part and learned real quick that racers are some of the most ungrateful bunch of people I have ever been around.
You all wonder why this so called sport failed and keeps dwindling down to 1 to 2 boats per class! You all want to call yourselves professional racers but you are not even on par with car club races! Ever gone to a Porsche Club race, SCCA, NASA(National Auto Sport Assoc.) race? Well, I have been to many and I meet a lot of ex-boat racers or guys that could afford to boat race but chose not to for all the reasons I read about in this thread and all the other threads year and after year. Feb 2009 Porsche Club race at Sebring had well over 250 cars entered...yeah remember the few years when just about that many boats would show up to a race? I do!...It's not the economy that has turned away so many boat racers through the years. It is the child like unprofessionalism of racers and sancationing bodies that turn these people away. It has been a revolving door of racers and people behind the scenes for years and these quality people have run out. You can't just keep replacing them and now you have what you have...1-2 boats per class...what a joke...not much competition....who care to win a trophy by runing around the circut by yourself...how boring!
Fever Mike
Charter Member
The next few weeks...
So it's true the way the situation has fragmented down to. Here's a positive next perspective.... over the next few weeks, after the OPA event, then there will be a reunion scenario in south Florida, available. It's obvious I realize, but just to make a point here, take your equipment and bring your team down to Ft. Lauderdale and race for two weekends in a row down there. Support the hard work invested into these two premiere race sites, and get back to that, passion and need for speed!
Someone start a thread for boat storage, in Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area, and build a list of safe and secure situations. The SBIP, and OSS events in June are capable of being incredible for everyone, just like the good old days!
Someone said on here, we need more racers and fewer talkers... There is some racing going on here the next three weeks, baby! Let's do this...
Coach
So it's true the way the situation has fragmented down to. Here's a positive next perspective.... over the next few weeks, after the OPA event, then there will be a reunion scenario in south Florida, available. It's obvious I realize, but just to make a point here, take your equipment and bring your team down to Ft. Lauderdale and race for two weekends in a row down there. Support the hard work invested into these two premiere race sites, and get back to that, passion and need for speed!
Someone start a thread for boat storage, in Ft. Lauderdale/Miami area, and build a list of safe and secure situations. The SBIP, and OSS events in June are capable of being incredible for everyone, just like the good old days!
Someone said on here, we need more racers and fewer talkers... There is some racing going on here the next three weeks, baby! Let's do this...
Coach
I wouldn't say my viewpoint is entirely negative, but the sport certainly has some barriers.
First off, how do you get the average person interested enough to care? There aren't enough of "us" to get a soap, beer or tobacco company to go deep with their wallets, so you need outside fans. You're most likely not going to attract thes fans from outside of the motorsport enthusiast community, so you need to take a portion of their attention away from other motorsports. So how do you do that? Wheeled motorsports is very easy for the average person to relate to and even those folks are having trouble retaining fans- NASCAR is losing viewership quickly. Drag racing is a dedicated but small sliver. Indy Cars is about the same. Formula 1 has a statistically insignificant fan base. So where are these new fans coming from? And more to the point, why should they? Where's the action? After the initial impact of the speed, size and power of the boats, what makes me want to spend my beautiful summer Saturday afternoon in front of my TV- more than once? NASCAR can't even retain these people anymore. I read recently that the average fan ranked the pit stop action very high on their interest scale- and the networks were cutting to commercials and skipping that part. If the competition isn't holding their interest, what does it take?
The real issue is this is all before we address the issue of a dozen classes on the course at the same time and no real way to tell who's racing who- especially if there's only one or two boats in that class.
There's just so much more competing for the average person's attention these days. Can you imagine making a list of what people's interests were in 1984 and sitting it next to a list from now, 25 years later? The sport needs to completely reinvent itself and become non-enthusiast friendly or it will continue to be a niche sport. Reunification will happen, but only because of a constricted marketplace that forces consolidation. And then the economy strengthens and entrepreneurship kicks in and you'll have a breakaway- either an enterprising club or new pro series. And the cycle will begin again.
First off, how do you get the average person interested enough to care? There aren't enough of "us" to get a soap, beer or tobacco company to go deep with their wallets, so you need outside fans. You're most likely not going to attract thes fans from outside of the motorsport enthusiast community, so you need to take a portion of their attention away from other motorsports. So how do you do that? Wheeled motorsports is very easy for the average person to relate to and even those folks are having trouble retaining fans- NASCAR is losing viewership quickly. Drag racing is a dedicated but small sliver. Indy Cars is about the same. Formula 1 has a statistically insignificant fan base. So where are these new fans coming from? And more to the point, why should they? Where's the action? After the initial impact of the speed, size and power of the boats, what makes me want to spend my beautiful summer Saturday afternoon in front of my TV- more than once? NASCAR can't even retain these people anymore. I read recently that the average fan ranked the pit stop action very high on their interest scale- and the networks were cutting to commercials and skipping that part. If the competition isn't holding their interest, what does it take?
The real issue is this is all before we address the issue of a dozen classes on the course at the same time and no real way to tell who's racing who- especially if there's only one or two boats in that class.
There's just so much more competing for the average person's attention these days. Can you imagine making a list of what people's interests were in 1984 and sitting it next to a list from now, 25 years later? The sport needs to completely reinvent itself and become non-enthusiast friendly or it will continue to be a niche sport. Reunification will happen, but only because of a constricted marketplace that forces consolidation. And then the economy strengthens and entrepreneurship kicks in and you'll have a breakaway- either an enterprising club or new pro series. And the cycle will begin again.
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