Ok. The input on the Champion thread twisted my brain a bit while sitting on the beach today. How much manufacturer politics play into what is allowed in various classes in any form of racing?

Lets get real here. You have three basic things with a raceboat. Hull type, (tunnel, V, hydro, flat etc.)

Then you have power. And, I personally come from and believe in the school that size matters, there ain't no substitute for cubic inches. So, engine size means, displacement first, horsepower right along side of that.

How much input did the Merc loyalists who sat on the APBA and other organization boards play in dictating what Champion and other motor manufacturers would do?


Let me side spin a bit. OMC had the rotory motor. It had 4 trulquiod housings, 4 rotors. Thus, 4 combustion chambers, which in effect is equalt to any engine of the same displacement. So, Merc could not beat it, so what do they do? Gripe, complain protest boycot, etc. The engine was a legal engine.

The same thing happened in the 1967 Indy 500. We had Parnelli Jones driving the Granatelli owned jet powered "Whish mobile" at 3/4 throttle all race, leading the way. He looses a $10.00 transmission bearing comming out of 4 toward the checkered flag and Andretti won his first and last ever 500.

The next year the major auto manufacturers pitch gripes about the turbine car, in horror that if one won, the public would see the benefit and they would have to spend millions to retool.

So, the choke the air intake down, and all 3 turbines running that year heated up under yellow and did not finish. The following year, Indy outlawed all turbine cars.

See what I'm getting at here? Why won't they just let things that work work, leave the teams do the engineering and quit playing games that really don't belong on race craft?

Dale Earnhart Sr. said it best when they forced restrictor plates on super speedway cars.

"Why don't they just build the damn tracks safer and let us worry about how to build and drive the cars?

And in this case, boats......