If current commitments hold, the International Hot Rod Association will stroke $250,000 worth of checks to racers this Sunday at the end of the Race World Offshore Key West World Championships. Prize money and offshore racing are not words typically used in the same sentence, but assuming plans stick—and though I am skeptical by profession I have no reason to believe they won’t—those words will blend beautifully come late Sunday afternoon.
But did the quarter-million-dollar purse attract the record-setting 98 teams to Key West this year? It’s fair to say it damn well didn’t hurt. Money is a powerful motivator.
But it’s also fair—and bluntly honest—to say that two sanctioning bodies competing for loyalties of the same tiny pool of offshore racers led to a dismal regular season. By mid-June, offshore racers and organizers already were predicting a big turnout for this year’s Key West event.
And that was well before the IHRA put 250 large on the table.
Regardless of the depth of that financial impact, nothing would be happening in Key West this week minus Larry Bleil of Race World Offshore. For the past eight years, Bleil has poured his blood, sweat, tears—and for the record a whole lot more than $250,000—into the Key West Worlds.
A longtime Conch, meaning dude or dudette who lives in the tightknit Key West community, Bleil fought to get the Key West Worlds under his control eight years ago and won. And he has been working to make it better ever since.
Bleil loves offshore racing. No one outside the cockpit loves it more.
Not for a second do I discount the impact of this year’s $250,000 purse on the race-team turnout. It was a decider for many of them. I know because they’ve told me.
But minus Larry Bleil, his team and the work both have put in since they produced their first Key West event in 2018, there is no prize money to collect. Because there are no Key West World Championships.
And that isn’t speculation.