Inside Interview
©2004-6 Dwight Drum

Story and photos by Dwight Drum
Web work by Gary Larsen

Johnny Tomlinson

"Our track is constantly moving."

Fans of powerboat racing get the best of three worlds, a sandy beach, rolling seawater and roaring engines. Watching big boats bounce across waves while feeling a sunny breeze has many merits. It's more spacious than a seat in a packed NASCAR stadium and the entry price is finding a parking place and a patch of sand to erect a sun tent.

Dave Scott's Budweiser Select Offshore Racing usually provides much of the beach excitement with its colorful and highly-tuned boat. Fans can't get too close to this track either, but racing on open water creates a special attraction.

Zoomster.com visited nearby Lido Beach in Sarasota, Fla., to investigate these intriguing vessels. Our staff is accustomed to NASCAR ovals and NHRA drag strips so we had obvious questions ready for the Budweiser Select team. We found out that rain isn't a worry. But the track, the sea, is always unstable.

Stability in racing is always essential in the driver and the team. Meet the man who must be stable on unsteady water.

Dwight asked Johnny Tomlinson:

"When I'm running the boat, yes. I've been athletic my whole life and it adapts to the boat. I've been around boats my whole life. My reaction time on the boat is faster than the average guy."

"I played all kinds of ball through high school. I like sports. I love sports. I love the competitiveness."

"Being that I race boats for a living, you're always looking at what's going on around you. I guess that driving my car I'm pretty aware of what's going on around me running though intersections and not just having tunnel vision looking down the lanes straight ahead and not at the sides for something. Mainly it's more awareness from racing a vehicle. "

"I grew up around the water, so I've l always liked competitive sports. I've always liked doing something competitive even if it's a pickup football game we had here yesterday. I like to do competitive stuff. Being on or around the water since I was young I've always liked to go on fast boats and engines. I've always liked the mechanics of it. All though school I was learning mechanics and building engines. It kind of went hand in hand. "

"The biggest difference is that our track is constantly moving. We don't have the same track over and over again. We run lap after lap and the wind changes, the water changes. We have little differences out there. We can come in and they say a two or three foot sea and it will be a two to three foot sea all day but it changes. Every lap, every straightaway you adjust the boat a little bit different from normal conditions. The conditions always change. "

"It doesn't bother us. We stay dry."

"Usually if rescue personnel can't make it out in the volunteer boats and helicopters can't fly, they won't let us race at all."

"That it's a great show and a great event. Getting more boats back. Get it bigger how it used to be when we had a hundred boats at a race. It would be nice if we could get that kind of enthusiasm back. Get the sanctioning bodies to join again instead of having two separate sanctioning bodies. It would help us a bunch."

"Probably adapting to the speed and the engine technologies and new boat technologies and adapting to new boats. We build new boats every year. It's just constantly adapting, because every time you do something on another boat it's different. And the speeds in the last 10 years have just gone through the roof. We've really escalated the speeds up there."

"Yeah I think they do, work ethics, devotion and time. They put their time in the shop and testing. I think that anybody who is successful whether it's the minor league, football team or car racer or any kind of business. To be up front, to be a the top of your game, you have to put your time in and do your homework for sure."

"I'd like to say we learn something every race. Yeah. You learn stuff every season. Right now we're dealing with a new boat. It's not here right now. A few things mechanically in that boat that weren't in the other boats we're learning about. You're constantly trying something different, running a different setup that we've never run before. Our main learning curve this year is the new boat that we debut this year."

"Winning races. That's the best. These guys are great guys. We have fun together working on the boat. These guys work hard and everybody has the same goals. When you win races on top of it, those are always the best moments.

"I personally like running this type of equipment. Something that has this much horsepower and can go that fast across the water while running the rough water races. It's physically challenging as it is mechanically challenging in the boat. Those are the things l love to do."

"Boat racing, unfortunately the fans don't get a hands-eye view. Boat racing is the only sport I know that doesn't have its own arena. When you can run 50 yards away from them, then they see the power and the speed. If you happen to get someone in the boat with you, like this boat has four seats. Ocassionally we'll pop someone in the back seat and they have no idea until they get in the boat what it's really like. The outsiders really don't see it. We don't have our own arena, we have to create it, so it's hard to get the fans right on top of the action."