Seattle Washington News and Information. Steve David and the U-6 Oh Boy! Oberto/Miss Madison (left) leads Jeff Bernard and the U-5 Formulaboats.com (right) in the American Boat Racing Association’s national championship standings by 618 points entering this weekend’s Chevrolet Cup at Seafair. David, who has 4,764 points through four of the six races, is the defending champion at Seafair and he also won last weekend at Tri-Cities.
A fleet of 14 Unlimiteds - 13 that hope to still be around for Sunday's winner-take-all final - has arrived in the Stan Sayres Pits to begin testing and qualifying for the 58th annual Chevrolet Cup at Seattle Seafair today on Lake Washington.
In a sport in which the majority of the teams - both personnel and technology - are based in the Seattle Washington area, it's homecoming weekend on the American Boat Racing Association's 2008 Unlimited hydroplane series.
And while the majority of the fleet is from Seattle, the top boat in the national points standings, the defending champion of the Chevrolet Cup and the most recent winner on the ABRA series hails from right here in Madison.
Steve David and the U-6 Oh Boy! Oberto/Miss Madison stand atop all three categories. David, from Lighthouse Pointe, Fla., but driver of the Madison-based Unlimited, not only leads the 2008 national championship standings with 4,764 points - 618 points in front of another Indiana-based boat the U-5 Formulaboats.com I and driver Jeff Bernard - but he is also the defending Seafair champion and winner of the series' most recent race last weekend in Tri-Cities, Washington.
"Quite frankly, this defending champion thing is new for us," David said. "We're humbled to be in this position."
But winning should be starting to feel kind of familiar to the U-6 team. David has won three of the last five completed races in the ABRA series and looks to be a slim favorite to repeat at Seattle despite racing in a series that has more speed and parity than in any of his previous 19 seasons.
"The competition this year is as good as I have ever seen it," said David, who won his eighth career Unlimited hydroplane race at last weekend's Columbia Cup. "There are six to seven boats who can win a race on any given day."
And all seven of the contenders - as well as the other six pretenders - would like nothing better than to win the Chevrolet Cup.
"There's lots of pressure for everyone to do well here because there's so much sponsorship money in Seattle," owner Billy Schumacher, who's U-37 Miss Beacon Plumbing won the season opener in Evansville and was on pace to win last weekend before a broken prop derailed the boat just over one lap from the finish. "For the fans, that should only make the racing better."
Other top contenders will be looking to rebound from similar setbacks last weekend. The U-1 Ellstrom Miss Elam and driver Dave Villwock - the top qualifier at Tri-Cities and winners of two preliminary heats - are looking for their first win of the season after seeing their hopes in the Tri-Cities final dashed by a one-lap penalty for encroaching.
Jean Theoret, driver of the Miss Beacon and winner of Seafair in 2006, is currently third in the standings despite not finishing the final at Tri-Cities. The second fastest qualifier at Tri-Cities - the Evansville-based U-3 Hoss Mortgage Investors Too and driver Jimmy King - will be trying to further iron-out engine problems that have plagued the sport's only piston-powered Unlimited all season. The U-3 ran its best laps of the season last weekend before a burned piston led the team to withdraw from its spot in the finals.
Bernard and the Formulaboats.com, winners of the Governor's Cup at Madison, sit second in the national points standings with 4,146 points. David Bryant and the U-10 Hoss Mortgage Investors have been gaining ground on the sport's front-runners all season and now stand fourth in the points standings despite a one-lap starting penalty last weekend.
In addition to 13 Unlimiteds, there will be 14 Unlimited lights competing in that series at Seattle as well as an appearance by one of the sport's living legends when Chip Hanauer, Unlimited racing's No. 2 driver in career wins with 61, attempts to qualify a second Elam-owned boat using a new experimental renewable biofuel.
Hanauer, 54, a retired seven time winner of Seafair, will pilot the U-787 Miss Boeing in qualifying using a fuel developed by Imperium Renewables that is a mixture of 80 percent coconut oil and 20 percent Babassu oil (light yellow vegetable oil). Turbine powered Unlimiteds most often are powered by a low grade of kerosene.
Boeing successfully used the biofuel in February in one of its 747 airplanes, owned by Virgin Atlantic, in a maintenance flight from Amsterdam to London and Hanauer tested on Lake Washington with the fuel on July 10.
"If you didn't tell me it was a concoction of renewable fuel, I wouldn't have known the difference," Hanauer said. "People outside the boat ... said it smelled different, but as far as performance went, I couldn't detect any difference at all."
Hanauer never really pushed the U-787 in the July test, but will try to push the boat to at least the 150 mph range today or tomorrow before parking the boat on the dock come time for heat racing.
"We'll ask a little more of it than in testing," Hanauer said, noting he will not race at Seafair even if the boat qualifies. "It was the first time I'd been in a boat for 10 years, so I'll ask a little more of myself."
Unlimited qualifying will get under way at 1:15 p.m. EDT today with the first heat of Unlimited racing slated for 5:45 p.m. EDT Saturday with the winner-take-all final scheduled for 7:45 p.m. Sunday. In addition, there will be qualifying and racing by the Unlimited Lights as well as air shows on Friday, Saturday and Sunday by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels
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