Maryland’s Brit Lilly can sculpt and paint—just look at the four Mod V-class offshore raceboats the 38-year-old has molded, formed and dressed. If he had one more talent he’d qualify for Renaissance-man status.
Oh wait, he does at least one other exceptional skill.
Lilly can drive the hell out of an offshore raceboat, and he has the chops—a slew of victories and national and world titles that come with them—to prove it.
So he really is a modern-day Renaissance man. He’s also soft-spoken, approachable, humble and dedicated to his family. When he’s in the pits before or after an offshore race, his wife, Amanda, is usually close by and their daughter, Stella Rogue, is most often on his shoulders.
The owner of Lily Sport Boats in Arnold, Md., Lilly came to offshore racing prominence in the Stock V and Mod-V classes. Using molds from the late-Mark Spates, he built his first 29-foot Extreme LSB team raceboat in 2020 and campaigned it successfully during the 2021 Stock V season. He and throttleman Kevin Smith, a longtime friend, took home a world championship that year.
“It was my Covid boat,” he said, then chuckled.
A couple of years later, he moved into offshore racing’s Class 1 ranks, where from race to race he swapped the driver’s seat with his longtime pal Travis Pastrana, the motorsports world’s best-known extreme athlete. When his Class 1 ride rode off into the sunset with its sponsor after the 2023 season, he found a home on the Super Cat-class Dirty Money team.
With Lilly behind the wheel and Bill Pyburn, Jr., on the throttles, the team took home a Super Cat-class world championship in 2024. At the American Power Boat Association-sanctioned season-opener earlier this month in Cocoa Beach, Fla., he and Pyburn brought home the first of what they hope will be enough checkered flags—or at least podium finishes—to earn the 2025 APBA National Championship
Lilly and Pyburn also will share the cockpit of the new-for-2025 XINSURANCE South team’s Pro Class 1 raceboat this year. Their season starts next month with the XINSURANCE Offshore event at the Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri.
Though he’s eager to get started, he’s certainly not wasting time between now and then. Per family tradition, he headed to Disneyworld in Orlando with Amanda, Stella Rogue and his mom, Renee, after the Cocoa Beach affair. When he gets back to Lilly Sportboats, the company his famous offshore racing father Art Lilly, who died last year, started 40-plus years ago, he’ll get back to work on Mod V-class raceboat No. 5.
“I just build them to order,” he said. “I plan to go into production with pleasure versions after that one is done. I’d like to do 10 pleasure boats a year.
Spoken like the authentic Renaissance man he is.—Matt Trulio