Miss GEICO Victory Catamaran
The Miss GEICO offshore racing team has gone back to the drawing board in 2016 after a season of mechanical problems last year.
“We’ve hit the reset button for the 2016 season,” says Gary Stray, Miss GEICO crew chief.
The Miss GEICO team’s 2016 approach includes a fresh engineering crew that will emphasize consistency and reliability instead of wringing more and more power out of the twin 1,650 hp engines and BPM drives in the bright-green, 50-foot Victory catamaran. The organization had regressed from winning multiple world championships on the Super Boat International (SBI) and Offshore Powerboat Association (OPA) circuits to struggling to finish races in 2015.
The team will start the season with four identical race engines — two on the boat and two as backups. The engineering brain trust is working on more powerful engines that will retain reliability for the three-race world championships in Key West, Florida, in November.
Returning to the cockpit for 2016 are throttleman Scott Begovich and driver Marc Granet, who have been working together since the team was formed in 2004. The team’s 2016 campaign starts May 13-15 at the 7th Annual Space Coast Super Boat Grand Prix in Cocoa Beach, Florida. The team then heads north to New Jersey for the first two of three events in the Geico Triple Crown competition organized by OPA. The Geico Triple Crown includes races May 20-22 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey; June 17-19 in Atlantic City, New Jersey; and November 17-20 in Englewood, Florida. SBI races for the team include the weekend of June 24 in Marathon, Florida; August 26-28 in Mentor, Ohio; and October 2 in Clearwater, Florida.
The team will also appear at air shows on August 17 in Atlantic City and October 15-16 in Baltimore, Maryland. At these events, the boat will race one of the Geico Skytypers air show team’s planes. For a full schedule, go to www.missgeicoracing.com.
