The influence of San Diego\u2019s Bill Muncey is still evident among the ranks in the sport of hydroplane racing. The legendary driver\u2019s record racing performance and promotional strength maintained consistency that rallied a cause, said H1 Hydroplane chairman Sam Cole. “Bill Muncey is the reason I got involved in a marketing and public relations capacity in the early \u201880s,” he said. “I didn\u2019t want to see the sport fade away, so I got involved.” Some may recall that the late champion race driver once mortgaged his Mt. Helix home to put up the money to continue racing in San Diego. It has been said that driver Chip Hanaur retired after 61 wins rather than tie Muncey\u2019s record 62 wins. Current driver Dave Villwock explained that, “like Muncey, long experience has paid off for me. Bill gave something special to the sport. It takes so much experience to drive one of those things just to finish a race, let alone win a race.” Villwock, too, has been an influence by establishing improved safety conditions. What Villwock brought was the mentality of a crew chief to the driver\u2019s seat and the scientific expertise to make unstable boats safer. “We\u2019ve saved a lot of lives,” Villwock said. “We have proven that the science that we developed 10 to 15 years ago really worked.” Bayfair tidbits<\/b> \u2022 Hydroplane Chairman Cole wants to stage six races in this country and four in the Mid-east and China. A delegation studying an agreement package had tentatively planned to be in San Diego.\tCole also said that producers of the reality TV show “Deadliest Catch” will be filming a pilot at the races in San Diego and at Daho, Qatar in November for a series. \u2022 For the 13th year, Bayfair\u2019s Bob Davies will be Bayfair racing chairman, and with a cast of 800 to 1,000 volunteers, will be dealing with all the emergencies in this complex event. Davies and Jeff Thomas, board of governors chairman, have been on the grounds since Monday. \u2022 Included in this year\u2019s event will be outboard cracker boxes, POPRA offshore, Stock Outboard (Fiesta Island), APBA PWC, closed course Western, Formula Lights Series (Ski Beach) and SST-120s. \u2022 Also at Bayfair will be the relatively new Grand Prix West, an American Power Boat Association class featuring supercharged big-block engines producing as much as 1,500 horsepower. The 24-26 foot craft routinely attain speeds in excess of 160 miles-per-hour in the straights. \u2022 Other notes: Jeff Bernard\u2019s boat is the former Miss Budweiser in which Villwock had so much success. \u2022 Cole said he\u2019d like to get the series back up to 15 or 16 boats. \u2022 The Oh Boy! Oberto boat is actually owned by the city of Madison, Ind. \u2022 “This is not a one-time race,” Cole said of the unlimiteds\u2019 return to Mission Bay. “We wouldn\u2019t have returned if we thought we were going to have the same (sponsor) debate year after year.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The influence of San Diego\u2019s Bill Muncey is still evident among the ranks in the sport of hydroplane racing. The legendary driver\u2019s record racing performance and promotional strength maintained consistency that rallied a cause, said H1 Hydroplane chairman Sam Cole. “Bill Muncey is the reason I got involved in a marketing and public relations capacity […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Bill Muncey had lasting influence on races","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11593,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-no-images","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}