Tim Seebold had more to celebrate than his birthday yesterday. During the APBA national meeting in Florida, The NGKF1 series was awarded “Best Race of the year” in the OPC category and later “APBA – Best Race of The Year 2021” for the NGKF1 Lake Havasu classic .

PRW spoke to Timmy this morning, and he said :

To see that our series is getting recognised by the APBA in this way is fantastic. Lake Havasu was a dream come true event, and it makes me feel proud to be able to work with all our loyal volunteers.

PRW spoke with one of the race winners, Brent Dillard. He said.

Lake Havasu has the potential to become one of the biggest races in the world. The race has so much history within boat racing.

 

Last Year all the ‘legends’ of our sport showed up at Lake Havasu which made that race even bigger. Now that we have Timmy Seebold as a race promoter, I genuinely believe the sky is the limit for OPC racing.

We asked Dillard about his plans, and he promised an update soon, but he said:

Timmy gave me his word that the new Mercury APX200 and our current Mercury 2.5 carb engine will be competitive against each other. I’m extremely excited for the future of our sport. Now drivers and teams have an option with which engine they will run. I was worried about the teams with smaller budgets but like I said Seebold gave me his word, if a team wants to buy a new safe competitive boat and don’t have money for the new APX, they can race with the much cheaper carb engine and still be competitive. Also, Mercury Racing said over and over they are 100% willing to help Seebold’s Series in any way they can. Like I said I’m extremely excited for the future of our sport.

RJ West told Powerboatracingworld.com that:

For me, this was a great race location that brought out the ‘legends’ from the past, as well as many of my childhood memories of Havasu classics from the past. Nobody left without being entertained.

And what about the 200 APX Motor for 2022?

I got a chance to directly compare my Optimax 200Xs with the 200APX. First off, I’m a Two-Stroke guy. That said Mercury’s goal was to make the new motor perform as closely to the 200XS as possible. It was Mission accomplished.

 

On the first day of testing, we got within 2/10ths of my Optimax times from the previous day. THIS MOTOR IS LEGIT. It isn’t a fishing motor plopped on a short mid-section; it has been designed to be a purpose-built racing motor. Job well done and thanks to Mercury for letting us be a part of this.