With AMF Offshore Racing founder John Haggin announcing his retirement (click here for story) from the sport in October, many people wondered what would happen to the Miss GEICO Racing team, a fan favorite on the racecourse.

Moving forward with the formation of a new executive group, the Miss GEICO Racing team and its turbine-powered, 50-foot Mystic catamaran race boat will be going full steam ahead in 2011. The team announced last week that its new executive group—Scott Begovich (throttleman), Scott Colton (team manager), Gary Goodell (marketing director), Marc Granet (driver) and Gary Stray (rigger extraordinaire)—will continue to operate Miss GEICO Racing with the helpful marketing support of GEICO and is looking forward to many more years of great racing action.

“We thank John Haggin for allowing us this tremendous opportunity and we will not let him down,” said Begovich, who will be joining the team's fleet of boats at 14 national boat shows in 2011, including New York, Miami, Dallas, Phoenix, Baltimore and Atlanta.

After the boat shows wind down, the team will focus on racing Miss GEICO—easily one of the fastest race boats on the water—in races sanctioned by all the sanctioning bodies.

“We’re done getting involved with sanctioning bodies, it just doesn’t work for us,” said Granet, who writes a blog for www.powerboatmag.com (click here to check out Marc’s blog). “We’ve poured a lot of time and resources into the races in the past and those efforts will now be turned toward strengthening our corporate foundation.”

Miss GEICO will get a new paint job and performance upgrades over the winter. The team expects to unveil the freshly sprayed neon green boat at the Miami International Boat Show in February.

“I’ve got a couple of tricks up my sleeve for the show,” said Gary Stray with a coy smile.

“We have already established a great working relationship with these guys and we plan on expanding the popularity and reach of Miss GEICO while further promoting GEICO,” said GEICO representative Vince Giampietro.

Check out www.missgeicoracing.com to read more about the team and to catch all of the racing action and boat show information for next year.