50s, 60s, & 70s race lengths

[Aaron Stewart]

I'm apart of an online boat racing community and we've, for a long time, have run our vintage boats the same way we run our modern boats-- 3 flights, 3 lap heats-- with a 5 lap final.

 

We've recently had an addition of new hulls to our fleet and I was thinking about changing our format to a more historically accurate format. I notice a lot of the races are listed as 45 miles. I was initially told that it was the entire event totally 45 miles, however someone just tonight after our race said it was just the final-- However the 1971 Gold Cup video I watched apparently only ran 4-5 laps (although maybe it was heavily edited)

 

So really all I'm asking of the history buffs are how many laps did they run back in the 60s and even early 70s? Curious about both heat races and final heats. I'd like to plan the format of our racing league primarly around the late 60s, although if it differes slightly in the early 70s I can try to factor that in too...

 

-Aaron R Stewart

'TNH' Tuesday Night Hydros

http://www.uhlhydroplanes.com/

[Randall E. Roe]

The Gold Cup was originally 90 miles total if you completed all your heats including the final. Back in the Fifties heats were 10 laps each. The race first shortened to 60 miles I believe, then 45.

[Robert Frank]

Aaron;

As Randy has stated, they used 3, 30 mile heats in the 50's and early 60's.  If memory serves me correctly, it was in the mid to latter 60's that some races began shifting to the 60 mile heats.  This was due to shortening the course sizes down from the usual 3 mile ovals.  The larger 3 mile course had longer straight aways, which allowed the boats more area to reach higher speeds.  But with all of the accidents, and deaths, that occured during that period of time, they began to shorten alot of the couses in an effort to hold some of that speed down in hopes of stopping alot of the fatal accidents.  Eventually when the turbins came along, the courses, and heats were shortened even more to the present day 45.  Who knows, maybe if they had raced only 45 instead of 90 back in thoughs days, the piston engines might have lasted longer?  Hard to say.

By the way - I'd really like to hear back from you about this computer racing thing your into.  Could you write me back and tell me about it.

Thanks, Rob