There's no secret to the fact that the associations currently involved in organizing and/or sanctioning professional offshore powerboat racing in America are possessed by an intense drive to take the sport to NASCAR-style heights

Nothing could please me more than to see this happen. What upsets me, however, is the number of people - some of them offshore racing insiders - who continually criticize the efforts of the many dedicated men and women working tirelessly behind the scenes to make this dream come true. This negative approach only places additional and unnecessary obstacles on the playing board.

Fact is, the organizational growing pains of offshore racing history can easily be compared to the evolution of its land-based counterpart. The 2004 offshore race season contains many of the same dramatic ingredients that plagued NASCAR in its early days. Some of the key issues that need to and can be resolved include internal rivalry, corporate sponsorship participation and the creation of national marketing and promotion campaigns to increase public recognition of a spectacular sport.

The continuing development of high technology in NASCAR parallels the sport of powerboat racing, as does the continuing focus on racer safety. Today's race boats are as sleek-looking, safe and technologically advanced as their NASCAR equivalents.

Like offshore, NASCAR has been faced with ongoing issues of sponsor participation. In NASCAR's case, the two are today inseparable. In offshore racing, the extent of active corporate sponsorship has a lot of room for growth.

It took NASCAR many years to flourish. Given the right amount of time and a positive, approach working together to market and promote the sport, offshore racing has every chance of developing widespread audience appeal.

After all, statistics show that 28% of Americans are true-blue race fans. And offshore competition - like NASCAR - remains true to its primary goal: it's a race of speed! ( Top )