The origin of the class is in CRAM in the US. Home to the major 5.5uni fleet in the US... the sailors looked at the spinnaker transformation and wanted to upgrade. Nacra obliged and introduced a modfied Nacra 17 for the US. They started racing the Aussi nacra 17 hulls with a tall rig. The Nacra 17R.... (or Race). At the same time, the large n5.8NA fleet was switching to the Inter 20 and then to the F18 class. The big selling point for the new to the US market F18 class was TWO sail configurations based on teams size. Since every class wants to appeal to the most sailors possible... the 17R sailors in CRAM after a couple of years convinced Nacra that they needed two spinnaker sizes for down wind based on the helm's weight. The new class took on the name Formula 17 to reflect the weight formula. Eventually the class moved from carbon sticks to Alu sticks.

The big problem for this racing class is that the market for single handed sailors who want a spinnaker to go racing is really small. My hunch is that we don't have more then 15 or 20 F16 uni's and F17 boats racing in the US.

What is interesting is that Nacra believed that 17 feet was the sweet spot for a single hander with spin and argued that the F16 concept would prove difficult to push 16 feet down wind in breeze..... The extra foot of volume was critical in their view... After 10 years... the debate is mostly irrelevant.