Unlimiteds Season Preview
2011
season poses
interesting challenges
for a strong field
David,
Villwock return
as drivers to beat after stellar year
By
Fred Farley
Special to RoundAbout
|
2011
Lucas Oil Friday,
July 1: Saturday,
July 2: Sunday,
July 3: Madison
Regatta 2010 Results • Unlimiteds race information: www.H1unlimited.com |
(July 2011) – If the results of last season
are any indication, the 2011 Madison Regatta shapes up as an exciting
event with plenty of competitive action for the fans.
A fleet of 12 Unlimited hydroplanes will converge on Madison, Ind.,
this Fourth of July weekend for the 61st running of the Indiana Governor’s
Cup, sponsored for the second year by Lucas Oil.
The two teams that garnered most of the glory last year are
expected to pick up where they left off on the H1 Unlimited hydroplane
tour, sponsored nationwide by the Air National Guard. The
community-owned Oh Boy Oberto-Miss Madison (U-1) and driver Steve David
took first-place at Madison, the Tri-Cities and Seattle in 2010. The
Ellstrom family’s Spirit of Qatar (U-96) and pilot Dave Villwock
claimed victory at Detroit, San Diego and Doha, Qatar.
When the roostertails subsided after the last race of the season at
Doha, the Oh Boy! Oberto had 9,444 accumulated National High Points,
compared to 9,053 for Spirit of Qatar. This entitled the Oberto
to carry the coveted U-1 designation throughout 2011 to indicate
the team’s status as defending National Champion – for
the third consecutive year.
David and Villwock are the two winningest active drivers in the APBA
Unlimited Class. David has been High Point Champion Driver in five
of the last six years. Villwock is on the threshold of becoming the
most victorious Unlimited driver of them all with 62 race
wins between 1992 and 2010. Dave is currently tied with the
late Bill Muncey who likewise won 62 races between 1956 and 1981.
Clearly, David and Villwock will take a lot of dethroning. But in boat
racing, nothing can be taken for granted. And there are several top-notch
teams that are bound to make things interesting in 2011.
Owner Ted Porter plans to bring not one but three boats to
Madison. These are the Graham Trucking (U-5), the FormulaBoats.
com (U-7), and the FormulaBoats.com II (U-57). The U-5 and the U-57 will
be driven by veterans Jeff Bernard and Mark Evans, respectively.
Bernard won the Madison Regatta in 2008; Evans won it in 1991. The U-7
will be handled by rookie Scott Liddycoat, who has made quite a name
for himself in the APBA Limited Inboard category.
In addition to Liddycoat, Porter will also be introducing another new
member of his team. She is Bianca Bononcini, a part of Porter’s
recently announced driver-development program. Bononcini will be
mentored by Evans in 2011. Bianca will test and attempt to qualify in
the U-57 at races this summer.
J. Michael Kelly, who placed second at last year’s Madison
Regatta with Ted Porter’s team, has transferred to the Billy Schumacher
organization for 2011. The boat is brand new and replaces a previous
Schumacher hull that was destroyed in a crash at Detroit in 2010.
Sponsored by Degree Men, the new hull is the only hydroplane in
the fleet that will not use the letter “U” in its registration number.
Rather, it will be designated as simply the “88” in order
to fit the sponsoring company’s corporate image. Kelly won
the Oryx Cup-UIM World Championship at Qatar in 2009 driving Porter’s
U-7.
Brian Perkins, another of the sport’s “young guns,” will
return to Madison as pilot of the Go Fast-Turn Left racing
team’s Miss Lakeridge Paving (U-21), which is a hull
copy of the Oh Boy! Oberto-Miss Madison. Perkins, a graduate of the
Unlimited Light Class hydroplane wars, guided the U-21 to third-place
in the Albert Lee Cup on Seattle’s Lake Washington in
2010.
When the Great Scott! Presents Broadway Tavern (U-22) hydroplane rolls
into town, Madison fans will notice something familiar. That’s
because the U-22 is the former 1988 vintage Miss Madison. Purchased
last winter by Mike Webster of Reading, Pa., the boat last raced as
Miss M in 2006. The family-owned Webster team is now in its third season
of Unlimited racing.
Former Miss Madison pilot Nate Brown will be back in town in the hope
of repeating his 2002 Madison success when he won the Indiana Governor’s
Cup as driver of Miss E-Lam Plus. Brown now owns his own boat, which
he also built. That is the Miss Red Dot (U-17), which his nephew,
Kip Brown, primarily drives.
What would a Madison race be without an entry from the Leland Unlimited
(U-100) camp? Fred Leland and his driver, Greg Hopp, will be back for
another try in 2011. Mechanical difficulties prevented the turbine-powered U-100
from starting in last year’s Madison Regatta. But the team bounced
back a week later to take a solid fourth at the Gold Cup in Detroit.
Owner Leland has for several years been tinkering with an experimental automotive-powered
project, which he may or may not bring to a race one
of these days.
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Photo
by Joe Saba/RoundAbout Steve
David in the Oh Boy! Oberto |
This past offseason saw a parting of the ways in the Billy
Schumacher Racing Team. Crew Chief Scott Raney and driver J.W. Myers
left to form their own organization and acquired the hull and equipment
inventory of Ken Muscatel’s Superior Racing (U-25) team. Raney
and Myers will campaign as the Miss Peters & May (U-11), sponsored
by Peters & May USA, the well-known global marine logistics firm.
You can’t keep a good man down. Not even experimental heart surgery
this past winter could prevent Dr. Ken Muscatel, “the world’s
fastest forensic psychologist,” from doing what he enjoys best
in the cockpit of an Unlimited hydroplane. Despite selling his boat
and equipment after 2010 to the newly formed U-11 team, Muscatel
turned around and leased the former U-48 hull from the U-21 team. Madison
is one of Muscatel’s favorite race sites. He finished second here
in 1998 driving Miss Northwest Unlimited.
• Fred Farley is the H1 Unlimited Historian. Contact him via email at: fred@hotmail.com.