Offshore racing isn’t having its best season. You are, of course, entitled to believe otherwise.
You are also entitled to believe the world is flat.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the split in the sport as witnessed by two sanctioning bodies. Whether you believe the split had to happen or never should have happened doesn’t matter to me. I’ve heard both sides ad nauseum. I’m not complaining—it comes with the hat—but I’ve heard them. Of course I have personal opinions—lot and lots of them. They will stay that way for now.
But here is one irrefutable fact.
Last weekend’s St. Petersburg Grand Prix in Southwest Florida was excellent. Canceled in 2023 by back-to-back hurricanes, it came back strong with a 51-boat fleet—just a few teams shy of its last total—and two days of action that included utter dominance in the Class 1 and Mod V categories and different winners each day in all but the single-boat fleets.
Thanks to the El Bandido Yankee Tequila, it also produced one of the most spectacular V-bottom wrecks in the history of the sport right in front of thousands of fans on St. Petersburg Pier. No one died. Heck, for that matter, neither owner/throttleman Steve Miklos nor driver Steven Fehrmann were seriously injured.
After performing a sweet double-corkscrew aerial that would make a Russian gymnast proud, the boat landed sunny-side up, meaning hull-side down. Its engine even fired, though Miklos are Fehrmann had enjoyed enough boating for one day.
Another high-point? Other than one hard whack between two teams that naturally don’t agree on who caused it, 15 Super Stock teams ran Saturday and Sunday without incident. So great was their mass that it was visible miles offshore from the St. Pete Pier before the swarm came buzzing toward the start/finish line.
The fleet even included a few new teams, Good Boy Vodka/Go GPS and Say Less MF in Factory Stock and Irish Kevin’s in Mod V, in St. Pete last weekend. It was enough to give a longtime observer—this one at least—a little hope for the future.
And more than enough entertainment for one weekend.