Powerboat world championships germany

Way back in May 2002, Massimo Lippi, Philippe Benhou and former Managing Director of Class One offshore racing, Nathan Knight had an idea - to create a commercially viable offshore Powerboat World Championship.Many had tried but no one had succeeded in developing a successful sporting powerboat championship. Formula One Powerboats came closest but that was inshore and like all good idea's, it needed some financial backing.When TV Corp decided to sell their rights to Class One, Knight, who had been approached to take over the rights of a fresh powerboat racing platform, noticed the long tradition of powerboat racing needed purging from its long distance inshore racing, similar to point-to-point racing.In 2002, powerboating was at a lowpoint with The World Championship, merely raced over one weekend with only five boats competing.Six months after initial conversions with current Powerboat P1 CEO and Chief Executive Asif Rangoonwala, Knight came calling once again.Lippi, Benhou and Knight had made a visit to Genoa Boat Show in October 2002, negotiating 40 meetings with various officials and manufacturers, over eight days. The feedback was clear - the manufacturers still professed a vested interest in powerboat racing but they didn't want to associate with anything that wasn't a professionally run organization.Rangoonwala, a major sports fan, especially of the American market, had seen the US model operating successfully with its franchises and sports properties making good business sense. Seizing the initiative, Rangoonwala worked on the idea of how the turnaround sports property model could work in powerboating.Then in May 2003, the Powerboat P1 World Championship was born in Nettuno, Italy. 12 boats (six from P1), 70% of which were Italian, raced in the first Grand Prix of the Sea. Unlike today's supercharged twin-engine monhulls, most of the boats in Nettuno were 15 year-old aluminum boats, illustrating just how far the sport has developed.Understanding the key to the future was developing a sport's competition with a level playing field, Rangoonwala & Co continued to push the boundaries, focusing on developing a promotional platform that would not just attract manufacturers back to sport by ensuring the rules catered to production models, but creating an international sporting competition that could continue to prosper.In 2009, The Powerboat P1 World Championship continues to climb its Everest with Grand Prix of the Sea events in Sweden and Turkey joining ten other different countries from six previous years of competition. Now with Croatia added to the calendar in 2010, Powerboat's gospel continues to spread.