Though 25 teams showed up for the first race of the 2010 Offshore Super Series (OSS) season in Biloxi, Miss., the eight teams in the Super Vee Light class put on the best show. Tagged “Smokin’ the Sound,” the race also was the first event of the SVL Series, a nine-race series organized by the SVL race teams and held under various sanctioning bodies including OSS, Offshore Powerboat Association (OPA) and Super Boat International (SBI).

The moderate pre-race controversy that the new Fountain, We’ve Got Your Back, would run away from the fleet in flat water—the 32-footer owned by Michael “Doc” Janssen reportedly can reach 96 mph on its single Mercury Racing HP525EFI engine—was put to rest thanks to Jimmy Speros and George Auriemma in IMCO, a 30-foot Phantom that’s competed in the SVL class for years.

Still, the early battle between first-place finisher IMCO and We’ve Got Your Back, which ended up third, was tight. That the IMCO boat’s 525-hp engine over-reved and actually went into Guardian mode at the start neutralized the pole position advantage the boat earned through a draw of cards at the drivers meeting.

“George shut it down and started it again without us coming off plane,” Speros said. “But the Fountain went by us, and (Steve) Miklos (in the Sunprint Management boat) went by us. We lost about five boat lengths.

“We got to the first dogleg, and I could see we were even with Miklos and the Fountain was still three or four boat lengths ahead of us,” Speros continued. “As we approached turn 1, the Fountain had the inside and his attention appeared to be to pinch us, just as I would. As soon as he set up for the turn, we dove to the outside of the turn and we were matching him—his spray hit us in the windshield twice and between the two times it hit us I could see we were almost even. We ran the entire next straightaway—I’d guess it was about two miles—side by side. I had position on him as we approached the next turn, and I held him out until the moment I wanted to turn and took the turn like I was by myself. We found two or three boat lengths there, and he was unable to make them up.”

Speros said he expects the new Fountain to be competitive throughout the SVL series, which is supported by $90,000 worth of contingency prize money from Powerboat P1 USA.

“That certainly is a winning boat, but this class is tight enough in competition so that no boat can just run away with it,” he explained. “The next race will be in Sunny Isles Beach (Fla.), where 1- to 3-footers is ‘calm’ water. Because we won in Biloxi, we will start on the outside. Progressive, Sunprint and Typhoon will be the three favorites there. We enjoyed winning the first race, but by no means do we have anyone covered.”

Matt Janssen, Janssen’s 20-year-old son, piloted the new Fountain race boat with Brian Forehand. His father, who ran his Saratoga Stampede Fountain in the Super Vee Extreme and Pro-Am 1 classes, said he plans on being in the boat for the next Offshore Super Series event (June 5-6 in Lake Cumberland, Ky.) and was pleased with the Super Vee Light results.

“Taking third was not bad for our first race,” said Michael Janssen. “We also had some success with the Saratoga Stampede boat—we won the Vee Extreme class and the P-1 class.”—Matt Trulio