My only concerns is that if you decrease power, the way to go faster is then to decrease weight, these things are already potato chips. Hopefully material isn't taken away from areas where it needs to be most....
Absolutely, they need to make the canopy rules have minimum compression and yield requirements. We saw it just recently in the difference between the flips of Beckley's Skater outboard and Nick's Wright outboard. They both flipped in St Clair at about the same speed, just a year or two apart. Beckley didn't even get wet, opening the bottom hatch and climbing out to the recue boat (Balsa Cored Canopy). Nick's canopy imploded and instantly filled the boat with water (Foam Cored Canopy). Difference between end-grain balsa and lightweight foam.
"Shear Strength: The shear strength of most PVC foams is around 40-60 psi; some are much lower. Balsa is 400 psi."
http://www.yachtsurvey.com/core_materials.htm
"The fact is that foam cored laminates are extremely vulnerable to impact damage, and can be highly prone to core separation. Our examination of balsa cores revealed that they, too, fared much better than foam cores. The advantage of balsa is that it has both superior bonding strength and superior shear strength. Whereas foam is very weak against inter- laminar shearing forces, balsa is quite strong. This is easy to understand because we all understand how wood is weak with the grain, but very strong against the grain.
We have all heard the hype that foam cored panels are stronger than solid laminates. What you may not have heard is that cored panels are only stronger if they are flat! Curved cored panels are decidedly weaker than solid glass panels, particularly when compressive loads are applied in shear mode. Most foam cored panels take very poorly to bending. The "S" shaped reverse curves of the typical sailboat hull is a case in point, and accounts for why so many failures occur in sailboats. Here we see that the shape of the panel has everything to do with the performance of cores.
The effect of stress and compression loading on foam cored panel. Bending causes inner and outer skins to creep at different rates due to the difference in the radius, causing the core to shear or separate.
To understand what happens to curved panels, imagine an "S" shaped panel like a sail boat hull section. Now, apply a compressive load on the ends as shown opposite. What happens? Well, the inner and outer laminates bend and creep at different rates, owing to the fact that they have a different radius. This causes a very unexpected shearing force that shears the very weak foam. This, in a nutshell, demonstrates why so many foam core failures occur on curved surfaces as compared to flat panels. The shear strength of the foam is simply inadequate to resist these forces."
http://www.yachtsurvey.com/HiTech.htm
Graphs of shear and compressive strengths of foam core materials versus balsa core materials:
https://www.boatdesign.net/articles/foam-core-properties/index.htm