Hydroplanes Still Racing Against Tide : Motor sports: Enthusiasm abounds with Doner in control, but sponsorship money and sites to race remain hard to come by.

When Bill Doner took control of hydroplane racing’s Unlimited Racing Commission last year, he promised more boats, more major racing sites and more pizazz.

The pizazz he has delivered. The boats and sites have been more difficult.

“Sometimes I think I should slice my wrists, but other times I think we’re making progress,” Doner said at the halfway point of this year’s Hooters Unlimited Hydroplane series.

Hooters is part of the pizazz that Doner, a former drag racing deep-sea fishing and Las Vegas casino promoter, has delivered.

He’s selling speed in the sunshine, water sports with all the trappings.

Two races were added to the 1995 schedule, one at Firebird Lake, near Phoenix, and the other in Kansas City, on Smithville Lake. Reviews were mixed on the new events.

Phoenix was a disappointment because the course is so narrow that only two boats could race at a time, and lane choice determined the winners.

“It was a format I stole from drag racing,” Doner said. “People want to see big boats go fast, and we provided that for them. It wasn’t like the Gold Cup, but it was side-by-side racing.”

Chip Hanauer, seven-time national champion and the Phoenix winner, said racing at Firebird was “like putting a school bus on a go-kart track.” Hanauer also won this year’s Gold Cup, his 10th, in Miss Budweiser.

Finding sponsorship money hard to come by in Kansas City, Doner decided to have the URC promote the event itself. Financially, it probably wasn’t a solid decision, since only about 8,500 fans showed up for the race. But as a racing spectacle, it was all pizazz.

“There has never been a weekend like it for the unlimiteds,” Doner said enthusiastically. “Seven different winners in seven heats. In all the years I’ve been watching these boats--and that goes back to 1956, when Hawaii Kai won on Lake Mead--I’ve never seen that happen. No one else can remember it happening, all the way back to the first [American Power Boat Assn.] unlimited race in 1946.”

The problem with introducing new sites and finding new boats is like the chicken-and-the-egg riddle. Which comes first?

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life, a lot of them crazy and a lot of them successful, but trying to sell this sport is the toughest thing I’ve ever faced,” Doner said. “It’s a hell of a lot tougher than I ever expected. I’ve got a bigger headache than I ever had when I partied all the time.

“Finding bodies of water near major metropolitan markets is very difficult. If you don’t have a lot of boats--like about 12 or 15--you can’t find sponsors who will put on a race. And if you don’t have major markets like Los Angeles or New York, you can’t find new backers interested in buying or building a boat.

“For years, unlimited hydroplane racing has been like a club sport where the members have deep pockets. We’ve got to get it to a higher plane, one way or the other.”

One way, Doner insisted, is to get races into the Los Angeles and New York areas.

“I’ve been looking at Long Beach for two years now, and I know Chris Pook was interested in going in with us, but now he has that new track in St. Louis and his priorities are probably in a different direction.”

Pook, promoter-founder of the Long Beach Grand Prix Indy car race, recently bought Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Ill., across the Mississippi River from the St. Louis arch.

“If we can’t get Long Beach, I’m looking at Lake Perris,” Doner said. “It’s closer than Riverside [International Raceway] was [to L.A.] and they had some huge crowds there. I think Lake Perris could be sold to the public. There are a million boaters in Southern California, and at least some of them might like to see a race closer than San Diego.”

The San Diego Bayfair Muncey Cup, promoted and conducted by 900 volunteers of Thunderbirds Unlimited under the direction of Jim Kidrick, is scheduled for Sept. 15-17 at Mission Bay.

Kidrick said the greatest challenge for the unlimiteds is getting more major sponsorships for individual boats.

“On a big body of water, like Mission Bay, we need more boats,” he said. “Right now, only four boats have national sponsors, and only two of them, Miss Budweiser and Smokin’ Joe’s, have full backing from Anheuser-Busch and R.J. Reynolds. Two others, T-Plus Engine Treatment and Pico’s American Dream, have partial sponsorship. The others are mostly on a race-to-race basis.”

Denny Jackson, race chairman for last week’s Governor’s Cup regatta in Madison, Ind., echoed Kidrick’s appeal.

“We are in worse shape than we were five years ago,” Jackson said. “It goes back to the lack of interest by major corporations. This town cannot support this race by itself.”

Bernie Little, owner of the Miss Budweiser boats and unlimited hydroplane’s link to Anheuser-Busch; and T. Wayne Robertson, president of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.’s Sports Marketing Enterprises, are bullish on the progress being made.

“I was skeptical of Doner, everybody knows that, when he took over,” said Little, whose boats have won a record 15 American Power Boat Assn. national championships. “But after 18 months, I think he’s done a damn outstanding job. He’s a hell of a promoter and I like his enthusiasm.

“Right now, he’s out there taking on more than he can handle. What we’ve got to do is get him some good help to work on getting more owners involved. No doubt, we need more boats. The sites will come easy when Doner can go in and say he’s got a solid fleet of boats to put on a race.”

Boats are not cheap, however. It costs about $500,000 to start a season with one boat and one Lycoming turbine engine. But more than one engine is needed, and they cost about $100,000 each, race ready. And it takes another half-million to run the series.

“We’ve been involved in many racing endeavors, but there’s been a special pride in having the winning Gold Cup boat in our lobby in Winston-Salem,” said Robertson, whose Sports Marketing Enterprises branch of RJR sponsors Steve Woomer’s Smokin’ Joe’s boat as well as NASCAR’s Winston Cup stock car program and a National Hot Rod Assn. drag racing team.

“We won it with the Winston Eagle and last year with Smokin’ Joe’s. Winning the Gold Cup is something extra because of all the great heritage and tradition the race holds.”

Mark Tate, a third-generation boat racer from Detroit, drove Woomer’s Winston Eagle to victory on the Detroit river in 1991 and came back in 1994 in the boat, renamed Smokin’ Joe’s, to win again.

Woomer, who was instrumental in choosing his longtime friend Doner to take over leadership of the unlimited series last year, said he was pleased with his recommendation.

“I feel like we’ve made progress as a sport,” said Woomer, a Seattle auto parts wholesaler. “One of the big things he accomplished was a strong TV package, with all our races shown on Saturdays or Sundays in good time slots. Television is vital in sports these days.

“When you get right down to it, what would the Super Bowl be without TV? When potential sponsors see how our races are showcased, maybe they’ll join up. That’s all we need, more boats, to give unlimiteds a big boost.”

The seven-heat, seven-winner Kansas City race will be shown Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on ESPN.