MANITIE

The days of being on the edge.....

Cat light has a good turn out...but it will never be a 20 - 23 boat class like F1 and F2 was....that was affordable racing....not to many guys can go out and drop $500 k to race SCL....F1 and F2 combined was almost 45% of the boat turn out....

If you take what the adverage race boat owner can afford today.... over 50% of racers have a boat thats around 130k or less....

Thats why the biggest fleet in OPA is in P4,P5 and P6....OPA has 40 teams regs. in 2007 for these 3 class's
with 17 teams regs in P4 for 2007.....puts that owner right in the F2 budget in 99-2001....I think you will see these class's getting the closest to the 20 - 23 boat count for a class in the furture....

JO - PANTERABOATS

F1 and F2 class were great racing. Will most likely be racing P2 class in the black 35' next season with SBI and maybe a few with OPA.

Regards,

JO - Pantera Boats

MOBILEMERCMAN

Jo- Great shot. Good luck next season, I'm sure you will give'em hel! I personally know how hard and well you guys run. Best Wishes.
Jim

JO - PANTERABOATS

Thanks Jim.

rchevelle71

iTrader: (1)

Jo,

Glad to see you coming back, we will most likely be running the F1-2 Fountain, or some other boat in some class next year, if you need ANYTHING around the races, let us know.

Rick

fastedy

Im Shot.
I think about the F1/f2 days almost daily, Mark and I talk about it once a week and Randy and I talk about it at least once an month. I think Bryan was on to something last year, maybe bad timing, to many changes from the 1st meeting till the rule book came out, maybe it was requiring to much up front for other to take a leap of faith. Bryan made big promises but was looking to give a lot back when maybe it could have started out a little less strick, ie resealing, when a lot of guys still have sealed motors from the past.

Or why couldn't you work out a deal with Mercury for 525's at cost (better than OEM) for race motors only, maybe pay regular price but receive a money back contingency per race no matter where you placed, maybe you get your money back over 15 or 20 races. Also, speed was becoming a problem, would it be a problem to take out 200rpm out of the Rev Limiter in the computer. I would bet Smitty would let the class Race all OPA events on the same deal as the class boats if you had enough boats. Just my .O2

Flashwave

If someone ever pulls F1 back together again, they should grab the 03 rule book and run with it. Most interested owners have the equipment and even more folks have 525's now.

Eddie (aka BO Kid )please let me know how Chattanooga turns out. With Smitty testing more boats, I'm very interested to see how much parity there is in the classes. It seems he's getting boat classification dialed in. If it works there, POPRA needs to get on board and follow his lead.

J

MANITIE

Jim...
I have to say....in Cambridge every class had battles...in P-5 there were 4 boats running together...P-6 another battle...it was great deck to deck racing....in P-3 4 boats started 3 boats finished with 5 seconds of each other....p-4 another battle...

We sat on the dock and watched the p-6 adn p-5 guys racing...there was deck to deck racing everywhere....

pepper-e

Hey Steve, how are you and Mike doing these days? Really is a shame about Factory Class. As I look back on it now, I realize just how much I enjoyed working with you guys and seeing Factory Class come into its own. Racing pre-Factory with roughly 30 plus ‘A’ Boats and 20 ‘B’ Boats was also a blast (pre buzzi & bat boat). By the way, didn’t Mike run a diesel in a Corsa for a while (same boat)? Pepper

AIR TIME

I second THAT