Lucas Oil Outerlimits Racing Updates from Powerboat P1

Naples, Italy felt welcoming to the largely Italian-American Lucas Oil Outerlimits Racing team. Though driving there was a challenge, the waters seemed much more receptive to a powerboat race than the team’s first Powerboat P1 race in Malta! There, a 3-story drop from a wave launched the first place Outerlimits team into a “hole” and left them out of the race, due to a broken water pump. But that was a week ago, a world apart, yet only a bay away, from this bustling port city on the West Coast of Italy.

Since the Port of Naples is adjacent to the military base that hosted the wet and dry pits, it was a busy waterway. With Nigel Hook joining the team for the first time, testing was an important part of the pre-race preparations and the new Lucas Oil logo on the boat was impressive! Hook and Joe Sgro took turns at the wheel with Mike Fiore, president of Outerlimits at throttles and all was good. With two World Championship racers and APBA Hall of Champions drivers at the helm of his SV40, Fiore was a happy man—until the Powerboat P1 officials notified him that there was a discrepancy in the interpretations of their calculations of the horsepower and those that Mercury provided for their new EU662 SCi engines. As a result, despite repeatedly explaining that the HP was not equal to the number of the engine’s name, the Outerlimits boat was assessed a 500 pound “penalty” for the race. This change threw the crew into a whirlwind in the dry pits, trying to make last minute set-up changes the night before the first race.

Though the boat handled the mild chop of the Mediterranean with no problems, it was not quite running up to speed. The race took an unexpected turn when the “home team” Italian-run Donzi flipped on the outside of the course after a chine-walk sent it into a spin. Fiore came upon the boat and only saw one helmet in the water. He stopped immediately and exited the boat, ready to jump into the water when he saw the second helmet and the “thumbs up” from the team. With the race back underway, the Lucas Oil Outerlimits team still took third place on day one, but was unhappy with the performance of the boat and continued to tweak it over the course of the evening.

On day two, the team felt as ready as possible to be in the heat of the race. However, at the start, the Lucas Oil Outerlimits team, with Hook racing in the boat for the first time, saw the Wettpunkt boat coming at it from the side. Fiore backed off the throttles and the boat got a thorough soaking while driving through two boats’ rooster tails to steer clear of the collision. Fiore and Hook, took the boat from sixth in the field of eight, to third place and held on for the duration of the 8-lap sprint race. “With the water, smoke, alarms going off and soaked engines, it took us about four laps to get the boat running properly again,” commented Hook, “I never get rattled in a boat, but that was a frustrating experience!” he added.

“We are very happy that we were able to take two third place finishes under these circumstances,” said Fiore, “When you are racing—especially in another country, working on your boat in the dry pits, making significant changes at the 11th hour--it is very difficult. Our crew did a fantastic job and we think we performed exceptionally well,” he added.

So now, with the racing gremlins behind them, the team prepares for its next trip to the Baltic Sea and the Germany resort town of Travemunde, June 30-July 1. “We’ll be ready,” said Fiore, “We’re going to go very fast!”