St. Louis Winter Meeting This Weekend

[Sam Baker]

I'm heading down to the St. Louis Drag Boat Association meeting this weekend. There's a big meeting Saturday morning to discuss the new marketing arrangement and to go over rules for 2008. Any suggestions?

I had heard SDBA was considering going to "dial-in" for all classes 10 seconds and slower so you can run a 10.30 in Modified Production and dial in at 10.30. Essentially the same as River Racer class. Any thoughts on that one?

[Fl Boy in ILL]

Sam

For what its worth I don't like it (dial in ) except for RR, that is the class to start for your average hot lake boat or bass boat, that is what should feed the next classes.

Rick

[Sam Baker]

I felt the same way. Actually, this would certainly almost kill the river racer class since most anybody who runs that class at this point is adding weight to slow down to the 12s so we'd end up stepping up to Stock Eliminator and killing River Racer.

WE NEED MORE BOATS IN RIVER RACER. I don't know how to go about it, but it's the most fun since Ole Evinrude invented the outboard motor to go get his girl some ice cream.

[mmassm]

Sam, I agree with you & Rick! Keep the dial in RR.
Mike

[Sam Baker]

I have my laptop with my wireless card so I'll update everybody as soon as the meeting is over. It starts at 10:00 this morning.

[Fl Boy in ILL]

Sammy
Your card get UNWIRED???? Been 24 hours and nothing, let us know the skinny, thanks

Rick

[Sam Baker]

Sorry. I was running around like crazy and forgot about updating.

Meeting went well. From a schedule standpoint, here's what it looks like for SLDBA.

Poplar Bluff, MO - 5/17-18
St. Louis, MO - 6/21-22
Oklahoma City, OK (w/SDBA) - 7/11-13
Augusta, GA (w/IHBA) - 7/19-20
Litchfield, IL - 8/23-24
New Athens, IL - 9/6-7

I've attached the multi-club schedule. IHBA is showing Gadsden as a race, but that is virtually dead. It MIGHT happen, but signs aren't looking good.

You'll have the choice of picking OKC or Augusta so there will be 5 points races this year.

As for the Quarter Mile Marketing portion, there was a lot of great discussion. Almost too much for here, but they are EXTREMELY accomplished gentlemen who are really excited about racing in SLDBA and SDBA. They will focus this year on attracting sponsors for next year. They've already purchased a motor coach and are getting it wrapped, they'll be flying in sponsors, wining them and dining them, and have already committed to putting $1000 into each race that can be used for prize money or for special prizes - i.e. closest to number, best reaction time, most perfect run, etc.

They are going to make their sponsorship packet available to individual drivers so we can use it to try and get sponsorships for our boats. It'll have info like demographics, economic impact information, etc.

So, it's up to us to look professional, put on a good show, come out in numbers and have a good time.

We spent some time talking about continuing to speed up the program. SLDBA is committed to having 4 rounds of qualifying.

Discussion came up about working with KDBA and it seems the sticking point still seems to be KDBA not wanting to run the NDBA rule book. We need to get past this so we can start working together in my opinion.

There are a couple of potential new sites that are still being worked - Cedar Rapids, IA and Mountain Home, AR. Neither may happen this year, but work is being put into them so hopefully they'll come to fruition this year or next.

I think that's it in a nutshell.