Offshoreonly.com - The lost tapes: Key West

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I forgot which year, 1999 or 2000 was when cigarette/playboy sponsored the SBI key west races. That was one awesome year to attend! I remember Wild child ran that year. That was probably when that pic was taken.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZMIDLYF (Post 4727912)

Same could be said about many forms of racing Tank.

Absolutely and it's only my humble opinion. ;)

But it does seem like a LOT of people enjoyed the factory classes and miss them.

F-! and F-2 Were off the hook !!!

15 to 20 in each class .

reasonable rules

attrition was light.

Personalities Awesome !!!..

.four or five regular guys could afford to campaign a team all season.

Most of all the teams had old and young participating .

It will never come back .But Hey just like OSO under steve,schubles direction ,we can say we were there .

Quote:

Originally Posted by thisistank (Post 4727897)

LOL

I mean the 80's were spectacular too and the era of Apache and all that....Aronow's time was obviously the critical time in the sport. Watching the big boys run even now is awesome but there was just something about the racing in the late 90's early 2000's with the F classes. The fleets were HUGE and there was something thrilling about "race on Saturday, go play on Sunday" mythology that followed the fleet. Factories getting involved and the whole class was very inviting to all. Could also be it was just the time in my life when I actually owned a boat too, the 70's, 80's and early 90's I didn't obviously as I was too young. There was just something special about the Factory classes. Wish they were still around.

One of the reasons I loved F2 racing was that the boats were so similar in size, speed and performance to the Open Class boats of the 1970’s. The nostalgic aspect of it was really cool.