I have spent more time on this thread than racing this year... :party-smiley-004:

Ryan...I think a lot of us are on the same page....Spec racing is not for everyone and P-Class racing is not for everyone....

Is there to many Spec Class's....I think alot of us think there are to many...
Is 6 P-Class's to much...I think thats a good number....it covers a lot of boats

Do all the Orgs have good race sites...yes I do....

The road to success is kida easy....OSS is spec racing....OPA is P-Class racing and SBI/APBA is both Spec and P-Class racing...we all just need to build a program to get more teams to come out...

Once the number of class's come down....the number of boats in a class will come up...we all said this 5 years ago....

and maybe the conversation of 1 boat in a class will no longer be....

TX2....but I'm woundring....were is the problem...racers making the rules or big money teams getting there way...you have been in this for what over 30 years...its sounds like in your above post that racers all want it there way

Almost.....there are a lot of big and small money teams crying they all want it there way. That is not something reserved exclusively for the wealthy teams.

In the past....... the good old days....long ago in a universe far, far away...... back in the USSR boys......Four score and seven years ago...... In the forest primeval....... right after the "big bang"....... The "national classes" were pretty consistent and raced year in and year out without much commotion, b*thchin', or rule changes. The little guys have always whined like school kids ( I wanna trophy!...I wanna be on TV!!!...... I wanna reporter to talk to me!!!.....)..... But they're entitled to because basically they are relatively new at it and are immature in a lot of ways.

Today the inmates have taken over the asylum......

In retrospect it all started going downhill when OPT broke away from the APBA/UIM........ and it has gotten progressively worse with each new group. If you had watched it year by year from my perch it is as clear as a graph that trends steadily downward....... and each year you hear the same trite platitudes of "bigger and better"..."deck to deck"....."letting it all hang out"... "Together we race".... "new visions"...and the other meaningless B.S. that passes for new wine in old bottles.

Bottom line, a mistake was made 20 years ago, and we have built on a flawed foundation ever since. I don't know what it will take to bring this sport back to its simple basics....... but any other approach is just more time and money wasted....IMHO.

T2x

Rich

Do you think puting things back in the APBA's hands would help ??

Thanks for the opinion TX2....

So why doesnt HE move up to a class where there is competion? If you want to win a hollow title where you were the only one competing for it go for it just do expect to get alot of respect from the racers who accually had to race other boats and run every race to get theirs. hell you dont even need to complete all the laps just run one lap put the boat back on trailer and go home go to the next race if noone shows do it again!.....Sounds like alot of fun!!

I have always thought that the racers should all get together during an off season....... choose one organization by majority vote....and abandon the rest....forever. I don't care which one...but one only.

This get's rid of a bunch of overhead in the form of multiple chief referees, presidents, scorers, safety teams, and PR hangers on. That will allow all of the budgets to be combined and be used for the absolute best Safety team, Directors, inspector, referee, and administrative marketing people. Then through a "benevolent despot" approach....classes should be reduced to the absolute minimum....... period.

The rest will follow suit in a MUCH simpler world.

just my .02.....

T2x

Big Dady...well I can't speak for other teams....but for one if his boat is in P4 and he can only run 82 mph....moving to P-3 against boats that are 8 feet longer and have more then 500 hp more then him not to mention they are 10 mph faster....that may be one of the reasons....plus again there are 8 teams registerd in P-4 in SBI/APBA...you get 1 move to go to a bigger class in a year...so even if he did move up and now another one of the 8 registers shows up now what...and what happends for the Worlds in P-4 were 7 -9 teams show up dose he move back down again....when you show up to a race you just don't know who is coming....

The bottom line is if he wins a National Tilte and he picks up some sponsors or his current sponsors are happy with what he's doing....and he can continue to race....thats a plus in this sport....

Like some of the guys said on here that have been around this sport forever....they already think the sport is going south. So to me.. pulling titles will not bring it back....there are 4 Orgs in the country with maybe 16 + class's....

Like some of the guys said on here that have been around this sport forever....they already think the sport is going south. So to me.. pulling titles will not bring it back....there are 4 Orgs in the country with maybe 16 + class's....[/QUOTE]

You said it brother 16+ classes .In my opinion thats about 11 to many . You might as well just keep adding more "P" classes add like 10 more all the way down to somthing like P15 so the guys with the Bayliners can join in or anyone under 25mph. I think the time has come to consolodate classes and add more racers to less classes build competion and focus on building the sport and building a larger fan base which will bring more sponsorship and coverage!