With a dominant performance by Miss GEICO and a fierce battle between Team AMSOIL and Popeyes at the 2008 Super Boat International Key West World Championships, catamarans proved why they remain the world’s most exhilarating race boats.

Originally published in January 2009 issue

By Matt Trulio

Near the end of the awards ceremony at the 2008 Super Boat International (SBI) Key West World Championships, Scott Begovich confessed something to Marc Granet, his teammate in the 44 MTI Miss GEICO catamaran, which had just taken its third-consecutive Turbine class title. Begovich, who throttled the cat with a pair of 1,800-horsepower T-53 engines providing the power, could hold back no longer.

“You know when I yelled at you when you blew Turn 2?” Begovich said to Granet. “I put you into that turn at 142 mph. I overdrove you into the turn.”

Granet just laughed. He was completely satisfied, relaxed and in no need of apologies from his close friend and racing partner. And who could blame him? Any mistakes either he’d made as a driver or his partner had made on the throttles were long forgotten in what had been the most dominant performance in the relatively short history of Turbine class offshore racing.

Despite mechanical problems during the first race—the three-race SBI Worlds format has all major classes competing Wednesday, Friday and Sunday—Miss GEICO managed to carve out a second-place finish, thanks to a violent pirouette in the harbor turn on the 6.5-mile course by the Aqua-Mania Turbine class catamaran.

Though there were only three boats—Miss GEICO, Aqua-Mania and JBS Racing—in the Turbine class, the field was, at least on paper, competitive. In the second race, Miss GEICO took the lead early and never gave it up. Aqua-Mania got a great start in the last race and led for most of the first lap. But Miss GEICO took the inside line on the harbor turn at the end of the lap, grabbed the lead and quickly pulled away as it headed down the straight toward Turn 1 at more than 160 mph.

Delighted as he was with the outcome in Key West during the November event, Granet’s satisfaction had to do with the bigger picture—and a little vindication.

“You know, Scotty and I have lived with three years of hearing, ‘You guys don’t race anybody, you guys just run around out there on the course,’” he said. “And we’ve been patient. We can understand the perception. But to handle these boats at these speeds takes a lot of focus. Last year, we began to see the emergence of the flower. This year, we saw it blooming. This year was competitive in Turbine, and we proved that we have the top crew out there. Everything is equally important, from transportation to running the boat, to logistics.

This year, we jelled as a team.

“I don’t mean this to be cocky at all, and I don’t want it to be taken that way,” he continued. “I have nothing but respect for our competitors. But on Sunday, you had the undisputed lineup of the fastest offshore race boats on the planet. And what you saw on Sunday was domination. Not only did we take care of our class, we made up 3 miles to overtake and pass the piston class.”

Miss GEICO moved around the course at an accelerated pace that even the most clueless fans couldn’t mistake for anything but scary fast. Though not nearly as spectacular, the performance of the 50-foot Mystic Bud Light in the Superboat Unlimited class was no less dominant or impressive.

Throttled by John Tomlinson, who has won 19 world titles in his offshore racing career, and driven by tunnel-boat racing great Mike Seebold, the boat took first in the opening race. In the second race, the Mystic catamaran, which was powered by a pair of 1,500-hp Sterling engines, broke a blower belt on the final lap with a 28-second lead and ended up second to the Team CRC MTI. The last race, Bud Light led wire to wire, and by the time Team CRC lost power steering and ended up bumping a turn boat in the harbor, the race for the Superboat Unlimited world title was all but over.

Tomlinson and Seebold definitely came into the Key West event with something to prove. They went into the Offshore Super Series National Championships tied for first but ended up second to Team CRC, a 39-foot MTI cat driven by Mike DeFrees and throttled by Jeff Harris. And no one likes second place less than Tomlinson.

“They blew our doors off at Ozarks,” he said. “It was a flat-water race, and they just ran away from us. So that was disappointing.”

Yet competitive as he is, Tomlinson also understands, as well as anyone in the game, the need to preserve equipment during the three-race SBI Worlds format. Bud Light’s blower-belt failure reinforced that for him, so he approached the final race with a conservative setup and strategy in what he described as calm conditions despite a steady 15- to 18-mph north-to-northwest wind.

Tomlinson said he had no need to push it. “I could have gone 175 on the back straight,” he said. “But we had such a strong lead and the engines felt good—we ran the same two Sterling engines all year. We didn’t even try to compete with the turbine boats.”

That the Bud Light Mystic would finish on such a positive note made the end of its racing career somewhat bittersweet. Acquired this year by Belgium-based InBev, Anheuser-Busch is pulling out of its offshore and tunnel-boat racing sponsorships, as well as its poker-run boat sponsorships. The company reportedly also will drop a significant portion of its automobile-racing sponsorships.

“The new owners have a different view of marketing and promotion than the traditional Anheuser-Busch view,” said David Scott, who brought the brewer to the offshore racing sponsorship table and earned several world titles as a driver with Tomlinson throttling. “But we are proud of the professionalism we brought to offshore racing. We are proud of our accomplishments—we were the first offshore boat to break the 200-mph mark and that record still stands—and we’re proud of the value we brought to our sponsor through offshore racing.”

That move leaves Tomlinson in an unusual situation—without a ride for the coming season—after winning yet another World Championship.

“I am a free agent,” Tomlinson said, then he laughed. “AB is out. I’m wide open. I know Dave (Scott) is working on something. I think Mike (Seebold) is out of the boat for good. If the right opportunity in the right boat comes along, I’m in. If it’s not right, I’m out.”

Not to be overshadowed by the dominance of the world-title winners in the Turbine and Superboat Unlimited classes, the Super Cat battle between Team AMSOIL and Popeyes, both 36-foot Skater catamarans, was simply wild. With Bob Teague on the throttles of his Skater, which like all cats in the class was powered by twin Mercury Racing HP525EFI engines, and Paul Whittier driving, Team AMSOIL prevailed in the first race. The racing between Team AMSOIL and Popeyes started close, but by the end of the race Team AMSOIL had stretched its lead to almost a minute over Popeyes, throttled by Stan Ware and driven by Jim Natoli.

But in the second race, Popeyes took a lead that it would never give up, despite several hard runs by Team AMSOIL, which for its trouble took several soak-downs coming out of the harbor turn. Popeyes took the second race win by 3 seconds. That left Popeyes and Team AMSOIL in the same position for the last race—a win that day would mean a title.

The two catamarans started the last race as they had the past two races—close and running on the edge.

“At the end of the eighth lap, we almost flipped in the harbor turn,” Teague said. “Paul did a great job of gathering us back in. We’d gotten a better start, but almost turning over slowed us down for the back straight and I could see Popeyes sponson on the inside in my mirror. I told Paul, ‘They’re right there, leave some room, the last thing I want to do is crash or get hit.’ Both of us (AMSOIL and Popeyes) held it wide open into the turn. We hit the turn at about 116 mph.

“Our boat jumped, skipped sideways and we almost flipped again,” Teague continued. “I figured we blew the turn, then looked back in my mirror to find Stan (Ware, in Popeyes). We thought he spun out. As we came back into the harbor I saw another yellow boat coming, but it was Billy Mauff in WHM Motorsports. I didn’t realize Popeyes had flipped until we were headed back to Turn 1. By then I could see Stan and Jim on the bottom of the boat.”

Popeyes had, in fact, rolled hard in the turn next to Team AMSOIL on the ninth lap and come to a rest upside-down. The crash was so violent that it knocked in the port side of the canopy and a tore off a portion of its rear section.

Ware and Natoli were sent to a nearby hospital, treated for injuries and released. (A day later Natoli was hospitalized in Miami.)

Asked if he’d ever been involved in such an intense racing battle, Teague responded, “Yeah. Every race this year. The guys in Popeyes are great competitors, and this class is the closest-matched class in the fleet. A little screw-up will put you out of the running and 1 mile per hour is a big deal. It’s always intense, and you never count your chickens before they’re hatched.”

Perhaps not. But if there was one thing competitors and fans could count on during the 2008 Super Boat International Key West World Championships, it was this: Regardless of class, the catamarans owned the show.

– Matt Trulio is a freelance writer for Powerboat.

Click to enlarge.