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MAN AND MACHINE AGAINST THE SEA
Hailed as the ‘the world’s most rugged
ocean race’ the fabled Miami-Nassau races
brought powerboat racing to the attention of the
general public and signaled the beginnings of modern
offshore racing. These races also provided the sport
with its first hero - Sam L. Griffith.
The first Miami-Nassau race, run on May 6, 1956
was the brainchild of American race car promoter
Capt. Sherman ‘Red’ Crise and yacht
designer, Dick Bertram. Of the eleven intrepid pioneers
who entered this now famous 184-mile race, eight
went the distance to complete the race. The first
boat home after nine hours 20 minutes, at an average
speed of 19.7mph, was the Griffith-Bertram entry,
Doodles II, a 34ft wooden Chris Craft with two 215hp
Cadillac Crusader engines.
Griffith was a larger than life character who made
the sport his own in those early years. He was regarded
as ‘the man’ and before his untimely
death in 1963 he would win four Miami-Nassau races,
break Gar Wood’s 41-year-old Miami-New York
powerboat record and capture the Around Long Island
Marathon. Many have since sought to emulate his
skills and when Class 1 came of age with a sanctioned
World Drivers’ Championship it was his name
that was selected to adorn the trophy that is today
the sport’s biggest prize.
During the 1950s the Americans had the sport to
themselves laying claim to the three major offshore
races in existence, the Miami-Nassau, the Around
Long Island Marathon and the Miami-Key West. But
in the early 60s Europe entered the fray to challenge
the Americans. Publisher Sir Max Aitken, inspired
by the Miami-Nassau, established the Cowes-Torquay
on August 19, 1961, with victory in the inaugural
179-mile race going to Tommy Sopwith in Thunderbolt.
A year later the Italians added their challenge
with the staging of the 198-mile Viareggio-Bastia-Viareggio,
which was won by an Italian ex-navy submarine commander,
Attilio Petroni, in A’ Speranziella. Over
the next thirty years an enduring struggle ensued
between the three founding nations for racing supremacy.
In the 20 years following its recognition by the
Union Internationale Motonautique (U.I.M.) and the
inception of the Sam Griffith Trophy in 1964 the
Americans were at the forefront of the sport’s
technological development.
Jim Wynne, Dick Bertram and Don Aronow led the way
with the Daytona, Mercuiser and Aeromarine powerplants
reigning supreme. During this period the Americans
posted thirteen champions and the Italians just
six. The lone exception was Wally Franz, a Brazilian
who lifted the title in 1975, but he succeeded with
an American boat, engine, transmission and throttleman
– hardly a Brazilian affair! Indeed, it was
not until Italy’s Francesco Cosentino took
the 1978 title in a boat designed by Don Shead and
built on the Mediterranean at Viareggio, the spiritual
home of Italian offshore powerboat racing, that
a Class 1 World Champion won the title in equipment
not of American origin, nor assembled and tended
by American engineers.
In the 1980s the pendulum swung to witness a period
of European design dominance. Don Shead’s
Aluminium monohulls from Enfield, Italian manufacturers
Picchiotti and CUV and the James Beard-Clive Curtis
Cougar catamarans set the pace. The European resurgence
was completed by the genius of Fabio Buzzi, whose
quantum leap into Glass Reinforced Polymer (GRP)
hulls, turbo-charged Aifo Iveco and Seatek diesel
engines, and integral surface drive transmissions
through his FB Corse concern proved unbeatable.
The decade of the 90s witnessed the emergence of
the Michael Peters designed, Tencara and Victory
built hulls that dominated the honours lists with
the American Sterling, the Italian Lamborghini petrol
and the Seatek diesel engines sharing the power
battle.
The last year 30-years have not only witnessed an
evolution in the technical side of the sport, but
a major overhaul to the overall make-up of the championship,
becoming a far more international affair. In the
early years, it was commonplace for teams to field
two boat entries, competing in as many as 18 races
at venues across America, Australia, South Africa,
Sweden, France, Italy and the UK.
Although the financial austerity in the 80s seriously
hit the championship leading to one event hosting
three races in a single location, the number of
competing nations nevertheless continued to increase
to include Argentina, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Jordan,
Kuwait, Malaysia, Monaco, New Zealand and Norway.
In 1992 the Championship reverted to a multi event
competition and more importantly in the following
years the diversity of nationalities claiming the
World Drivers’ Championship swelled in numbers
including America, Great Britain, Italy, Monaco,
Norway, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Fourteen titles have been won by Americans, twelve
by Italians, six by competitors from the UAE, seven
by a Briton, five by Norwegians and one each by
representatives from Brazil, Monaco and Saudi Arabia.
Five champions have taken their titles as novices
in their first season in Class I racing and only
three driver/throttleman partnerships have managed
back to back titles, Bonomi/Powers in 1973/4, S
Al Tayer/Serralles in 1995/6 and Gjelsten/Curtis
in 2002/3.
Gjelsten and Curtis are the only partnership to
win the title four times and Steve Curtis the only
man to clinch the world title seven times. The world
title was not awarded in 1990, as a mark of respect
for Stefano Casiraghi who died whilst defending
his title in Monaco.
Twenty-three titles have been won in monohulls and
eighteen in catamarans. Of these winning boats,
29 have been built in GRP, eight in aluminium and
four in wood. Petrol engines have powered 34 winners
and diesels the remaining seven. Three early titles
went to boats using conventional propeller shafts
but the more efficient, fully trimable Mercruiser
stern drives have accounted for twenty titles while
the more recently introduced surface drives make
up the remainder.
Propeller design has seen the early three-bladed
bronze wheels superseded by stainless steel props
of up to six blades for maximum efficiency and a
top team might carry twelve pairs of props of differing
pitches and diameters to accommodate differing sea
conditions, fuel loads and handling characteristics.
Speeds have altered beyond all recognition. In the
early 1960’s, races were regularly won at
averages of below 30mph (48km/h) but it was the
advent of catamarans in the 1980’s that allowed
the magic barrier of 100mph (160km/h) to be regularly
exceeded and now, winning averages of 125mph (200km/h)
or more are not unusual.
This quest for speed has produced boats, engines
and transmission systems which are inevitably more
sophisticated and the use of Fibre Reinforced Polymer
(FRP) with advanced composites using Kevlar and
carbon fibre has happily made them safer.
The crews of yester year stood up to the elements
as they struggled with navigation, throttles and
the wheel, taking a battering from the elements
with little protection. Today’s drivers and
throttlemen enjoy the advantages of being strapped
securely into body-hugging seats within safety cells
beneath lexan canopies borrowed from the aerospace
industry, whilst monitoring their progress on equally
advanced global positioning systems (GPS).
Yesterday’s racers were amateur sportsmen
and women, pioneers who looked the part. Today’s
crews wear fireproof overalls, driving boots, have
helmets plumbed with intercommunicating radios and
do battle in boats that only go afloat to test or
race and are prepared and maintained by a crew of
professional engineers.
These and all the other factors have shaped Class
1 powerboat racing into what it is today. But one
aspect hasn’t changed in the past forty-odd
years of action - the sea. And for all the progress
made, and the highly professional sport that it
has become, Class 1 still shares the same ingenuity
and ethos of its founders – man and machine
against the sea.
For information about the Class 1 World Powerboat
Championship, contact:
Nigel Quilter, Media & Communications Director
tel: + 44 (0)1252 713223 mob: +44 (0)7785 325346
e-mail: q@q4media.com / q@class-1.com
www.class-1.com
