Roostertail Talk

Episode 149: Mike Denslow

• David Newton • Season 7 • Episode 13

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The tides are turning for hydroplane racing. In this revealing conversation with H1 Unlimited Chairman Mike Denslow, we explore how a passionate group of business leaders and lifelong fans is systematically rebuilding one of America's most unique motorsports.

Growing up in Pasco watching hydroplanes thunder across the Columbia River, Denslow shares how his childhood fascination evolved into a mission to save the sport he loves. The formation of HydroTown marked a turning point, bringing professional business acumen to address longstanding challenges. 

Looking ahead to the 2025 season, we explore the excitement surrounding H1. For hydroplane racing fans old and new, this episode offers insight into how passion, business savvy, and community spirit are combining to propel this historic motorsport toward a brighter future.

Photo by Craig Barney at Unlimiteds.net

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Speaker 1:

Ruchetel Talk, the podcast dedicated to everything about the sport that we all love, hydroplane racing. I am your host, david Newton, and it's time once again. So sit back, relax and welcome to Rooster Tail Talk talk. Welcome back, race fans. It's June 2nd 2025, and this is episode 149. It's a very exciting time right now.

Speaker 1:

It's June, summer is upon us, us it's warm in the Pacific Northwest, school is almost out and that means one thing, and one thing alone the hydroplane racing season is upon us. This weekend we're going to have six teams take to the waters in Lake Guntersville and go for our first race of the H1 Unlimited series this year. A lot of of exciting things in place. Some new faces Got the new Miss Madison racing team that's going to be on the water. The Apollo racing team has new faces with it, with a new owner, bruce Ratchford. Just so excited that the season's here and while we wait for these few days for the first race to happen, I actually had a chance last week to talk with Mike Denslow, the chairman for H1 Unlimited, as he got to discuss a lot of things hydroplane related, but mainly all the work that's really gone on the past couple of years within H1 Unlimited, with the formation of the HydroTown group, his collective effort with all the people surrounding the sport, have really pulled together to make a better product for us for streaming, better product for us on the water and just hopefully propelling the series forward.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I just did a hydroplane pun there, but I really enjoyed my conversation with Mike Denslow. We've been trying to get together for some time now and just our schedules haven't meshed up well enough. But we made it happen last week and I really appreciate his efforts to make it happen because he's a busy man with a full-time job that's also running the helping to run the organization of H1 Unlimited with many others in a joint effort just to make racing great again. So let's dive into my interview as I talk with current H1 chairman, mike Denslow. Well, I'm sitting down here in my back room, my office, sitting on Zoom with Mike Denslow. Mike, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing good. Well, I'm glad to have you on here. I've known you for a while but glad to have you on the podcast and you've been working with H1 Unlimited for some time now and on the HydroTown group. I believe you're still the HydroTown group. I believe you're still the current chairman for the group. People might not know Not for.

Speaker 1:

HydroTown, but for H1, yes, okay, I got it there. Apologize for that, but people might not know your background with racing and H1. Could you share a little more about, uh, your history with hydroplane racing?

Speaker 2:

well, I grew up in pasco, um. My dad was a teacher, so we didn't live on the river but we lived close by right and I could look. I could look between houses and I could see little patches of the race course. So in the early 70s, mid-70s, when a boat would come out on the course, we would just run down as fast as we could and and watch them back. Then they started on thursdays testing and whatnot. So it was uh, four days of fun. But uh, yeah, the first race I remember probably 1973, and then the new pan pack wing wonder boat. That was the, the fresh new boat. That was our favorite. And then I really remember 74 with uh, with the u95. Those were kind of the okay, got me hooked years yeah, yeah, some exciting racing back then.

Speaker 1:

And uh, I wasn't asking you what your all-time favorite hydroplane is. Is it the 73 pan pack?

Speaker 2:

no, it has to be the uh, the payback turbine. When that thing showed up in the pits in tri-cities and looked like, and looked like something out of the future, it didn't look, you know, it didn't, didn't look like a lot of things, but uh it, it blew everybody away, including me, and then, yeah, I was, I was definitely hooked on paying back for a little while longer yeah, yeah, that was an amazing boat with amazing driver, john Walters.

Speaker 1:

A lot of great history there with that boat. Well, fast forward a few years as growing up as a fan, and back about a year and a half ago in December 2023, you helped to form the group HydroTown, trying to reorganize some of the leadership there. Can you talk us through your creation of that group and how you became chairman of H1 Unlimited?

Speaker 2:

Sure, I think it started with a conversation with Charlie Grooms several years ago, even before COVID, just trying to figure out a way of putting some business people together to run H1 in a way that made more business sense. We kept having conversations through COVID and then Daryl Strong bought a couple boats and so, okay, okay, all of a sudden we've got somebody else that would probably want to be involved and, uh, you know, just a lot of passion, a lot of phone calls and figured out that we needed to do something to try to move this sport forward. And just things from time to time wouldn't make sense to me. The 80 mile an hour rule never made sense. You're trying to watch the light on the top of the cowling and, like you know, there's no way that both going 80 miles an hour, oh, you know it.

Speaker 2:

Just there were so many inconsistencies that kind of drove me crazy as a fan, yeah, and then, after being involved with the waterfowl race, tri-cities race for 20 plus years, you know I I wouldn't use the word embarrassed, but I was like, uh, kind of let down that things. I didn't feel like things were getting fixed, rules weren't getting updated, and so we finally decided to form HydroTown as a company to promote H1 Unlimited Racing and at that same time, you know, the current board members of H1 stepped aside. Nicely, there wasn't any bad blood or anything. We stepped in and made a lot of changes, one of the first ones being the new start procedure for last year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, definitely a few changes there. I'm glad you admit that. As a fan for those years, it was a little frustrating with some of the inconsistencies of rules, because I think that's been echoed throughout, would you say. Thinking back at your first year, you said you changed some of the starting procedures. I know you did a little bit more than that, but as your first year is in the books, how would you rate the success that you had last year with H1?

Speaker 2:

Good question. I'm not a good grading myself, but it went okay. You know, we met every two to three weeks as a H1 board, two to three weeks as a H1 board and Daryl and I and others in HydroTown were talking every night, if not every other night, for a very long time. Our wives kind of knew that, oh okay, they're going to be on the phone for a half hour, 45 minutes just just trying to spend as much time getting into the weeds and addressing issues as much as we could. And last year, last year went all right.

Speaker 2:

The big win last year was bringing San Diego back and we jumped in with them in January and said, hey, we want, we want you to come back, do you guys want to come back? And kept having those conversations and we got, I think, about two months into it and they were like, okay, well, if you guys can raise some money and do this and do that, we're going to do it. And they started doing their thing, we started doing our thing and then, uh, it made sense to have the gold cup there and, uh, the previous year it was in seattle, last race of the year. And so san diego 2024 hey, you know, last race of the year and trying to get as many boats to come as possible. Let's kind of dangle that trophy for them.

Speaker 2:

And uh had an amazing race weekend in in San Diego, so that that was the best thing that happened. I mean, you've got to crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run and all those and those old sayings. But uh, so we crawled through. Last year. We learned lessonsings. But uh, so we crawled through last year. We learned lessons learned. Um, and now we're trying to fix, fix those again for this year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's an ongoing campaign to do all of that. That was fun last year having the gold cup in San Diego. Though was that I have a lot of old school um feelings about the sport, so I like the years when the Gold Cup traveled. I'm glad that it's traveling again. It's not just in one location. Past few years we had it in Madison, guntersville, san Diego, seattle, I guess, all over the circuit, so that's a great addition to have that tradition back with the sport and that's the plan to continue traveling Yep, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, and you touched on another thing there too, you did a lot of behind the scenes work with others to get San Diego back on the schedule, and it's an ongoing process, I'm sure, with a lot of different concerns and whatnot with the sport and the series. But what other goals have you had this off season? And working behind the scenes, what else have you done this year to kind of bring it to that next level for the 2025 season?

Speaker 2:

the rule book. The rule book was the big one there is. There's actually a few different rule books. Uh, there's the racing rules, there's the general rules and then there's race site specific uh rules. And, uh, we knew that we needed to go through.

Speaker 2:

Just as the evolution of the rule book has happened year after year after year, we knew that it needed a deep cleanse and, uh, it was actually my fault that it didn't get start it again. It didn't get started sooner the project, because we got done with san diego in september and I needed I needed more than a month to come down from, just go, go, go. So many different things happening. Because you look at our season last year, with Guntersville being late June, I mean the season was over in two and a half months and you're done. And, uh, I needed some decompressed time and, uh, some of the people were getting it with me, hey, we're gonna get after this rulebook project. And and I was just like, okay, okay. So finally in january, um, steve compton, one of our inspectors, and, uh, I'll say the crew chiefs, jeff campbell, mike hansen and, uh, scott rainey there was, there was a bunch of people involved mike noonan, who wrote more than 50 of these rules. Probably, you know, years ago got involved and, uh oh, taylor from the bucket list Now he's on the Apollo team, but Taylor was involved in there as well. There are a lot of different people. A lot of people offered their opinions and different things and the group would meet weekly and then they would send what they thought should be fixed and they'd send it over to the board. The board was meeting every two weeks starting in january and this group really did the lion's share of the work. We just kind of said, yeah, yeah, we agree with that. Hey, if you thought about that, the board as the board, but this group the rules and competition committee is what they are named they went through every paragraph of every rulebook and we're hoping I mean it's a lot of material, as you can imagine we're hoping that we've cleaned up as well. I know we've cleaned up as much as possible. I mean you can't have a rule for every scenario. I mean something's going to happen that doesn't really fit in. You know, we'll see how it goes in Guntersville and Madison and we'll continue to make adjustments as necessary. But I think we're understanding kind of the spirit of the rules and where there were holes that were could be potentially exploited, that. But we got the group together and the right people together to make those adjustments and the board is, for the most part, just let them run and change what they thought needed to be changed and said yes, yes, yes, and occasionally have you thought about this, but that was the majority of the offseason was definitely the rule book, the rule book. The other thing was daryl strong and bruce ratchford taking the helm of hydrotown and, uh, with with bruce buying a couple boats. I actually bought three boats racing two, those two together.

Speaker 2:

I can't take any credit for all the things that they've done with hiring Janik from HRL to be the communications and PR for H1.

Speaker 2:

I mean, if you're an H1 fan and you're on social media with what Brian Montgomery is doing and Jared Meyer and that you look at some of those, you know clips that especially mont work brian montgomery puts together and it will have. By the time I look at it it's got 55 000 views and and then you check back a couple days later it's got 270 000 views and I'm just like, okay, just letting him do his thing to spread our sport out there to a wider audience. But between janek and then, uh well, the hiring of tanner faust and uh to, to bring his audience and his followers to follow him, to then get those fans watching our sport Met him at the test session. Great guy, and he's all in. I mean, he wants to know everything about everything. He's technical, he's amazing. So looking forward to how that changes things. And then Daryl and Bruce also hired another guy, corey T as we call him, to not be confused with the other Corey that's in our sport.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, corey T yeah.

Speaker 2:

Corey T has got a lot of experience putting on live stream coverage of racing and so that live stream group has been expanded even more than it was last year and I'm looking forward to seeing what they can put on YouTube for all of us to see this year. But that's been all, Darrell and Bruce. They've been. They've been kicking butt over there with HydroTown and just putting the money, investing the money so that we can put out a better product for the, for the fans and potential future sponsors.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's. That's great to hear. It was kind of a twofold off season, a couple of areas to focus on, and there were some interesting posts about a lot of equipment that was purchased for cameras and other technical things for the live stream and video footage. Is that something that's going to be brought to every race, I imagine?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and they bought a trailer. I think even Daryl bought a trailer. So the live stream has always been saying you know, we have to break down our setup at every race. For the last several years and infinite amount of years, we we set up this amazing thing and then we break it down to nothing and take it to the next race. But now they actually have a trailer, um, and that's where the director will be sitting is in the trailer and uh, and there's a lot of, there's a lot invested let's just say that in that trailer. Um, and you know, every once everything gets lined up and and set, we're gonna, we're gonna have some great video for for people to see.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, awesome, and it's just you're building on what you've had a great product before. Love to hear Janik's on the marketing side. You mentioned Bryant Montgomery, all the great work he's done with all the fabulous videos, but I got to ask about Tanner Faust. How, how, how, how was the interaction there at testing? I believe that was like the first live day he was there on a hydroplane race. Uh, what were your thoughts and how excited was he to be there?

Speaker 2:

he's really excited. Um, on the friday I heard that he was in a boat not that he's. I heard that he's not ready to jump in and try to drive on right now, but he wanted to know everything, about everything. When I met him on Saturday, he wanted to know about the rules. He wanted to know about, oh, fuel flow. He wanted to know about, oh, fuel flow. He wanted to know.

Speaker 2:

Just, he's a professional and he's a professional racer as well, but he's been on the micro, on the microphone side too, so he knows what to ask a driver. You know we're like, hey, you're sitting in that seat. Um, he wanted to know about the pedals and controlling the, the front canard. And, yeah, he's, he's an amazing guy. Um, I, I remember him from top gear and even top gear us, and even before that, with some shows that he had on, uh, on television. But his passion for, I just say, life in general racing you know he showed up to our test session because he knew how important it was, but he had just gotten over pneumonia, like a couple days before. Oh, geez, yeah, yeah, but he still, he still flew in for testing because he knew it was important and he came in on friday so that he could have some time with the drivers and learn about the boats, because everything that he learned was just watching youtube videos. That's all he had seen before that, okay well, I'm glad to hear he's.

Speaker 1:

He's there. I think it's a big impact for the, the product you're putting out, uh. But I gotta ask do you think he'll be in a boat before the end of the year taking a few laps?

Speaker 2:

before the end of the year? Probably not because, like I said, it's so, our season is so fast, it's three months long this year but, yeah, maybe, maybe three months in a week, but you never know. Off season, uh, maybe an exhibition somewhere, you know, you never know, but I know he's interested, I mean, in being involved with our sport and very intrigued by our sport yeah, well, it's great to hear anything that can bring more excitement to it.

Speaker 1:

Well, with all that work in the off season I'm sure I know you said you were working on San Diego last year making sure they're back on the schedule. I know you said you were working on San Diego last year making sure they're back on the schedule. I know it doesn't just happen overnight to add new race sites to it and there's so much that goes beyond what the average fan knows. That goes into hosting a race. But what are your thoughts on expanding the circuit to more race venues? Is there a possibility we'll have another race next year anywhere? What can you share your thoughts on there?

Speaker 2:

Well, everybody not everybody, but a lot of people want Detroit back and there is some conversations happening and actually, to be perfectly honest, at the end of the season last year Daryl had hired a firm in Detroit as kind of a sponsor finder firm and they had some general interest, but we weren't able to get it over the finish line. The time was running out. Actually it was 20. Jeez, I'm running all my stuff together, but it was 24. And then we got to January and it was just kind of it was. It was too late to try to pull it all off together.

Speaker 2:

But conversations are still happening. There is still a level of interest by people in Detroit and that that would be the number one goal for additional race site there. There are conversations happening with exhibitions, um, possibly even after san diego, um, and uh, those, those will happen in a very with other most likely apba races where unlimiteds are not at, and uh might show up with one, two, three, um unlimiteds just to run around and uh, see, see if there's interest in hosting a race. But yeah, all those, all those kinds of conversations are happening to. To start a race from scratch anywhere where that doesn't already have a water based racing event is extremely difficult. Um, because you need to have a certain number of volunteers from that race site. And uh, if you know, look at all the race sites that are out there now. They've all been around for 50 plus years. Right, gunnersville was a you know 60s and 70s and then they went away and now they've come back. That's kind of the small success story, but it's. It's the outlier. Most.

Speaker 2:

All the other races have been around for 50, 60 years yeah yeah, but detroit is still on, uh, on the mind of figuring out if there's a way we can pull it off yeah, I love that, love to hear that.

Speaker 1:

Um, I know lots of fans chatted about that and, uh, would be amazing and I've actually never had a chance to to beat it in detroit for a race, so I'm really hoping you can bring it back so I can. I can.

Speaker 2:

I haven't either. I have not either, but our stat man, nick Kish, says that it's a pretty great site, so we're trying to get it for Nick.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, well, hopefully you can get it for Nick and all the other fans. Is there any possible exhibitions that you can share? That might happen, or is it more just kind of wait and see?

Speaker 2:

It's just talk right now. We'll let people know if it's going to happen. You know we'll have video if it's going to happen, if it comes together. But, like I said, at least conversations are happening right.

Speaker 1:

That's great. Two different locations, so excellent. Yeah, well, I hope the both exhibitions can happen and, uh, it's hopefully just build up on for the future. I know, as a racing teams, I'm sure they would love to go somewhere after san diego just to get all the salt water out of everything, right, so, hopefully, go to fresh body of water and, yeah, that would be good.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a, that's a big thing. Yes, yeah, if you know any crew members, that's boat owners. Yeah, yeah, that's the, that's the. There's pros and cons to San Diego and that's the con.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but there's so many pros down there, it's a beautiful place, that's right, man Well, with this HydroTown group, it seems for the past few years, mainly since Daryl and Vanessa Strong has come on board with H1, that there's more I won't say interest, but more ownership, I guess, of the sport. You have Daryl and Vanessa Strong, you have the Apollo team now formed in Tri-Cities, so four boats that are actually going to be racing on the series this year are from Tri-Cities, and I know you were a lifelong citizen of Tri-Cities. So what does this mean to you as a fan of the sport and just living in that area, but just for the future of the sport as well?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think one of the motivations to starting HydroTown and getting more involved with H1 is trying to do everything possible to make sure that our our sport continues and thrives. It's been called on that it's it's dying. It's dying, you know, for for a lot of times and it was like, well, we're going to get in and try to re-energize it. And Daryl buying, you know, two boats has been great Boats are headquartered out of Seattle. So the owners headquartered out of Tri-Cities but the boats are Seattle. And then Bruce and Lori Ratchford, again out of Tri-Cities, but boats are in Seattle. I think it just shows how big of an impact the Tri-city waterfowl is has to the community at large. Um, you look at flavor pack, oh, okay, well, that's a company that's, you know, got farms here, here and there, but, yeah, but the owner up until recently, um, and we passed away is is based out of Pasco, washington, you know. So there's all these people that have grown up with the boat races as the signature event of Tri Cities, that have then started successful businesses and want to come back to the sport, to help the sport push on and into the future. And even though I didn't buy a boat or two or three. You know I invested, you know, some of our money and a lot of time and effort and sweat into doing everything possible to make the sport and the series improve. Momentum that's the word we've used several times is just trying to get this forward. Momentum and exposure to different companies that, hey, I want to get involved with that sport and, uh, I like what they're doing. You know and had some of those conversations. So I would hope here in the next year that a title sponsor, present sponsors, those kinds of things would continue to see. The vision of kind of what we wanted to do keep continue to grow at H1.

Speaker 2:

And then the perfect thing is just budweiser. For example, you know back in the day, bernie little gets involved and he's a budweiser distributor and I mean, geez, if that wasn't the perfect success story. Right, well, we run, we want to run in big markets. So you know you, you see the budweiser brand on sundays and winning races and everything. And, and so these tricidians are us, including me. We want to see our little success story because if you look at the five race sites, you have two small towns that are able to put on a race, which is miraculous, in Guntersville, alabama and Madison, indiana. I mean sub 20,000 people live there, but they're able to put on a race.

Speaker 2:

Then you've got us in the midsize. Ok, we're 250,000 to 300,000 in Tri-Cities now somehow. And then you've got Seattle and San Diego, which are major metropolitan markets. So you've got three on the West Coast, two on the East Coast hey, maybe we bring back another major market in Detroit. Then we've got three in the East and three in the West. So we'll see. But it's money, right, because if you go from six races, let's say, to eight or 10, now these teams are going to need to have bigger sponsors with more money behind them, because they're going to need full-time crews. A lot of the crews are people like us who have full-time jobs and do this, you know, on the spare time, right, right. So you know, I think Tri-Cities is just showing the, the series and the and the markets out there that, hey, you know we're midsize, but we're all about making sure that our race continues. And so, yeah, that's how I see Tri-Cities and it's our biggest event in eastern Washington. So we want to make sure that it continues on into the future.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'd love to hear that. Yeah, definitely love that future talk. I always got to think about the future, helping the sport to grow. But I do hear a lot of pride for your heritage in the area and I always feel like Tri-Cities is a second home to me because I usually travel over there multiple times in the summer. But for your background you also did. You started a logo, kind of a I don't know what you call it your group for Love the Tri. Can you speak more to that?

Speaker 2:

Well, funny enough, I haven't thought about this story in a while, but I just thought about it today because I was wondering if he's going to ask me about Love the.

Speaker 1:

Try.

Speaker 2:

Well, I saw that my wife and I were flying back from somewhere. It might have been New York or somewhere. I think it was Portland. Actually, I heart Portland shirts.

Speaker 2:

You can get them at any airport and why don't we have that right? Yeah, I thought about it, and tri-cities is unique in that it's multiple cities, it's two counties. You know, north side of the river is franklin county, south side is benton county. Um, we had I felt like we had a little bit of an identity crisis, like asco took care of itself, kennewick took care of itself, richland took care of itself, and then you got west richland, benton city, burbank, some of the out outlying areas kind of did the same. So the idea was why can't, why can't I start something that would try to bring all of them together and rather than, hey, you know, focus on Pasco or Kennewick or Richland and the visit Tri-Cities was out there, but it was government funded and they were doing the best they could and I kind of saw what they had and was like I'm just going to take a different angle on it.

Speaker 2:

My wife was out of town, on a Saturday, I think, and I just got out a pad and I started what would I call it and I was like love, the try just came out of my head like it was destined, just boom, didn't think about it, didn't think of a second name, didn't think of anything, just like well, that sounds good, we'll just call it the tri. All right, I haven't heard anybody use that term, but let's go with that. And what would it be? What are we known for? Yeah, we're known for boat races Partial, right, okay, that's what we call it. Known for Hanford and that? Okay. Golf wine Okay, okay, that's been played.

Speaker 2:

And I thought about our sunsets in Tri-Cities, which underrated. I mean, unless you're there when a good one comes, you don't really know how good they are. And I said, okay, we're going to start. That's what it's going to be. It's going to be love the Tri, and it's going to be a sunset. And the sunset is shared for all the cities. You can see it from everywhere.

Speaker 2:

So I thought about it for a little bit more and I thought, well, ok, you know, I'm in the mortgage business now, as of a couple of months ago, 20 years in the mortgage business. So at that time I was like I'm not going to try to make money from this. I that time I was like I'm not going to try to make money from this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna donate 100% of the profits back to local non-profits and charities and designed a logo worked with atomic screen printing. Who's heavy into the hydroplane scene knew those guys really well and uh, I would. I'm no artist but I kind of put an idea down and then I would go to brent at atomic and he, he's the artist and he would make what was in my head and what I kind of put on paper. He would make that come out.

Speaker 2:

And uh had a lot of good projects donated boys and girls club cancer center. There was veteran the dogs that they have or the veterans, and just I met a lot of great people, designed a lot of cool things that came out. But to be honest, when the H1 stuff came back there was just no time. There's just when you're taking up your free time and even into work time with hydroplane racing. There's not a lot of free time to create, you know, and be artistic and that kind of thing and dedicate much time to it. So I haven't done much time with it lately but I'll be getting back to it and continuing on Donated. I think it was somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 back into the community, which I'm very proud of. But I also like the fact that we're trying to get the community to think of them as all the cities together, rather than, oh, I'm from Pasco or I'm from Kennewick, rather I'm from Tri-Cities, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, from Tri-Cities, yeah, yeah. Well, I just I remember loving the logo when you first came out with that and buying some stickers and shirts with that. So I always feel like Tri-Cities is kind of a second home for myself because I'm always going over there for the boat races and multiple times in the summertime, yeah, and so just fun to hear the success story of bringing back more to the community and bringing bridging some gaps with the, with the try.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I called it entrepreneurship through via philanthropy. Yeah, and I I've had a lot of fun and met a lot of great people through it. So, yeah, I'll be continuing it on as soon as I have more time.

Speaker 1:

That's the one thing I'm always searching for time. I'm a teacher and I do have a few hobbies. It's always the hardest part is just finding the time for that.

Speaker 2:

Well, I come from a family of teachers, david, so my mom and dad were both teachers, my uncle was a teacher, my grandparents were teachers. So, yeah, I yep, and so my style in business that I do is education. Yeah, like, oh, hey, you've got, you bought a house before, but do you realize this? You know? Oh, wow, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, educate as you go that's the way to do it Exactly Love it Well. Getting back to hydroplanes, that's why we're talking right, we love hydroplanes and just thinking about this season got five races on the schedule. We just had the test session in Tri-Cities. This year the Gold Cup's going to be there in Tri-Cities again for the 60th running of a race on the Columbia river. What would you say you're most excited for?

Speaker 2:

And what should the fans be most excited for this year? You think? Good question, that's. That's a tough one. There's my wife was just asking me, she just asked me that today and I think it's you know the Bruce Ratchford coming in with the two boats and Dave Villewalk and Mike Hansen working together to put those two boats, you know, up at the front again. Um, and Dave, dave is just unbelievable, I mean, at his age, still doing these things and, uh, you know, and with his, uh, him going into the motorsports hall of fame, uh, next year in Daytona beach, florida, that's, that's a big thing. Um, there'll be a lot of H1 people there. I can tell you that's something that we've talked about and we're going to. We're going to have a lot of people there to show how proud we are of Dave and his accomplishments when the season goes.

Speaker 2:

I would say they've done a lot of work on that boat that Dave drove last year. I know that. So he told me that, uh, I think he ran a one 61 in in tri cities in the rain and, uh, he wasn't pushing it, he was just trying to, hey, just trying to shake things out, and he was, he was giving it, you know, some speed, but it wasn't like he was trying to hit every corner, perfect, every, you know, everything, perfect. So that was good. Um, and then the other. The other big story is the new miss Madison and uh, and Brandon Kennedy driving that boat. And we'll shoot. We'll be seeing that here very soon in Alabama next week. And uh, I'll be anxious to see how they you know, they've put that boat on the water. They can get the laps in to get him qualified and uh, and, as far as we know, run the run the first two races with that boat and and learn. And so I'm excited about seeing that boat.

Speaker 2:

I loved the paint job when they came, when they brought it out of the that throwback yeah yeah, the throwback, because that was uh after atlas sold it to to madison and uh, yeah, in 77 that was the wing wonder right, yeah, and then also again in uh 99 with todd yardling.

Speaker 1:

Uh, they had that paint scheme as well.

Speaker 2:

Oh, really, yeah, I think of that boat. I mean, as you know, george henley, and I know I only do it for two years, um, and then I know there was the one atlas year but it's, it's forgettable because of the blue blaster. Yeah, right after, yeah, I mean it's like oh, yeah, okay, um, but I think of that boat in all those years, ron snyder driving the wing wonder, after the fact that in the in the community of madison, indiana, running that boat for so long and continue to get more and more speed out of that thing, year after year after year.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the new Miss Madison. That will be a good time. I think everybody will stand up and watch when they take that thing out on the water.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's sad to hear about the sale and all that, but glad there's a team together in Madison Again, definitely a city that has a lot of history and definitely needs to be in the sport. So glad to hear that they're going to be racing and bringing in some new faces for H1. Not new faces for racing, because the Kennedys have raced HRL for some time and have a long history of boat racing themselves, but some exciting things for the fans there. Well, I got one last question I want to ask you because I know that you've done so much work the off-season, with so many people trying to gear up for this year, a lot of things to look forward to. You talked about in the off-season all the work you did with the rulebook, more of an imprint on social media and your vision. I'll correct you, David. Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 2:

I'll correct you real quick. You said you did, it's not me.

Speaker 1:

Not just you. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's a big group of passionate hydroplane fans. I just I want to clarify, because I don't want to put that on my shoulders, because I feel like this year I haven't done nearly as much as I did last year. And other people have stepped in because they saw what we did last year and other people are like, okay, okay, now we're in and we're committed right, you know um to making things better, right?

Speaker 1:

yeah, it takes a village right um, but as as chairman, I guess, I guess the eyes are on you sometimes.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, for good and bad yeah for good and bad, uh, but with all the work that you and others have done this past season, if you had a magical wish, I could snap your fingers and have one other thing happen. Yeah, for good and bad, but with all the work that you and others have done this past season, if you had a magical wish, like you'd snap your fingers and have one other thing happen for this year, for H1, what would that be? I live in a hypothetical world. A lot of times it's my daydream.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think we figured out a way to put on a good show last year with four boat heats and we were rotating through five, six, seven, eight boats. But we were having four boat heats and I'll bring up potentially an elephant in the room of hydroplane racing. I'm a purist and I think that a lot of people are and want to see the boats continue to fight for lanes, and so, um, I would want to see, in the perfect world, 10 national boats and then we would have a sprinkling of regional boats to come to their close race and, uh, we would have 10 boats fighting it out and, uh, we would have five boat heats. Yeah, and uh then, uh, then it would get interesting. You know, because when Daryl came in and bought his boats and he invested what he invested, he spared no expense in getting his boats fast and a lot of full-time crew members. And now there's someone from from tri-cities who said, well, I'll buy a couple boats and I'll have full-time crew and we're coming after you. So a combination in the perfect world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'd like to have 10 national boats battling it out, um, but in the world, just for this season, I would want to see, um, those two groups battling it out and maybe they're so focused on each other. You know, jamie Nielsen comes around and uh, and sneaks out a victory because, uh, and sneaks out a victory because, uh, you know, you, just, you just never know, um, but yeah, it's going to be great seeing these. You know, just the, every year there's a new dynamic and uh, with Vilwock having a full off season to work on the boat with Mike Hanson and you know, and others in the old bud shop, how much faster and how much more consistent is that boat going to be than last year? Last year felt like kind of a test run, like okay, go out and run it around and but be safe, and and uh, but this year we'll see yeah, I think there's different story lines that are going to evolve.

Speaker 2:

And, uh, you know, we've got five, five national boats, and then we've got madison, we've got graham, we've got o'farrell, so we'll see, maybe we have five races and five different winners. How about that? That's the good PC answer from my side. Hey, different winner at every race.

Speaker 1:

There you go. As a fan, I would love to see that, and I just had an episode with the creator of Deck-to-Deck Fantasy, hydroplane, and we talked about some different scenarios and I said that Jamie Nelson and the Flavor Pack would be a dark horse underdog to win Tri-Cities this year. So it'll be fun to see them get a win.

Speaker 2:

Well, with all the strategy and different things that could happen before a race, you never know. You never know, you just don't know you think about jamie in gunnersville last year and uh, yeah, he he was. He got second place right and uh in the final. And uh won a heat as well and was super competitive with and held off j michael kelly. You know um anything can happen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and their cards fell in their place. In Seattle too, they got a second place after some other shenanigans happened out there, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

Yep, it could happen. Well, I appreciate your time, mike. Is there anything else you want to tell the fans out there from your perspective?

Speaker 2:

Well, if anyone thinks we're not doing anything to try to make things better, I can't tell you how many people have put in a ton of hours to try to make things better in the off season. We've got a lot of people that go to every race to make sure that things are happening safe between medical and the rescue boat on YouTube for the fans at home. So just know that we've stepped up. You know, when people say like, hey, if you don't like the result, we'll get involved, right, we have got involved and we're doing everything we can to make our sport better.

Speaker 1:

Well, I love to hear that. I think anything we can do to make it better is what we need, and it sounds like you're doing the right things there. A lot of positive things for the year to come.

Speaker 2:

That's the plan, david, and we appreciate you. I know it took us a while to pull this off with our schedules, but I'm glad we did.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I appreciate you. I appreciate your time. Yeah, some some sicknesses and other things kept us from from doing this until now, but really appreciate taking the evening to spend with me and talk about hydroplanes.

Speaker 2:

Not just talk about hydroplanes rooster tail talk.

Speaker 1:

That's right. Well, that's all the time we have for this week, Knuckleheads. Hope you enjoyed my chat with current H1 chairman, Mike Denslow, as he gave us more insight to all the goings on behind the scenes that we don't get to see as fans. Don't forget, this weekend big race our first race for H1 Unlimited is in Guntersville, Alabama. Please support the series. If you can't be there, watch on H1 streaming.

Speaker 1:

They're going to put out a great streaming service this year. They're boosting it, they're propelling it forward. They're making it better and bigger and brighter. In the meantime, don't forget, we're on social media, on Facebook and Instagram. Check us out online at ruchetaltalkcom. And don't forget that subscription service, Ruchetal Talk Plus, where you get early access to all episodes entered in for a monthly raffle drawing and more extras along the way, with our private archives in our website and some other fun features as well. But good luck this weekend to all the teams.

Speaker 1:

Thank you again, Mike Denzel, for your time being on the podcast and sharing some of your great insights and stories with us. Really appreciate you and all the work that you have done, as well as all the many others. I know there's many, many, many that are behind the scenes. It's not just you. You're the face as the chairman, but it's a group effort. It takes a village and I appreciate everyone and their combined efforts to make H1 Unlimited happen again this year and have a bigger platform for this great sport that we all love. So until next time I hope to see you at the Reasons.