SEATTLE – Despite a larger and more competitive field than there has been recently at the Seafair Chevrolet Cup, most fans would say that the favorite to win the championship would be the U-1 Miss Ellstrom Elam driven by Dave Villwock.
And why not? The U-1 has won three of the five unlimited hydroplane races this season, and had not lost a heat race he had completed all season.
But funny things happen on the water, and sometimes the fastest boat doesn’t always come out on top.
And on Saturday, Villwock couldn’t have been farther from the top.
Villwock ran into a rooster tail and stalled out during his heat race and finished last in a six-boat field at Genesee Park on Lake Washington.
The loss isn’t crippling to Villwock’s hopes of winning the Chevrolet Cup. Last week, he flipped during a heat in the Tri-Cities and went on to win the Atomic Cup. But it certainly doesn’t make things easy, especially with some other boats showing impressive speed.
“The rooster tail shut (the engine) off and I backed off the gas because I didn’t want to run into anything,” Villwock said. “I just had to bring the boat back in one piece.”
JW Myers in the U-10 Todd Hoss Presents Fairweather Masonry defeated Steve David in the U-6 Oh Boy! Oberto to win a spirited heat, and defending champion Jean Theoret in the U-37 Miss Beacon Plumbing was impressive in winning the other heat.
While Theoret somewhat easily handled his heat, Myers and David put on a show for the crowd.
The pair raced side-by-side for much of the heat and were neck-and-neck from start to finish.
“I knew I could out-turn (David), get a faster turn speed and accelerate, and he was running a lot harder than I was comfortable with,” Myers said.
“JW is a great racer,” David said. “There were a couple times I could have pinched him probably but I wanted a good, clean, safe race and JW gave that to me and we gave the fans a terrific idea of what could happen (today).”
Villwock was just behind Myers and David down the back stretch when he appeared to run into a rooster tail (the water that shoots off the back of a boat), leaving him dead in the water. After the race, Villwock intimated that perhaps Myers and David were closer together than the 10 feet called for by the rules, and didn’t leave him enough room to try to get through.
“I ran into some rough water and couldn’t quite get accelerated where I wanted,” said Villwock, who uncharacteristically started inside rather than outside. “Then I was getting there but I didn’t have enough room to run the boat. I just had to run out of there and eat the rooster tail and shut the motor off.”
With Villwock stalled out, the two lead boats raced toward him again on the back stretch but cut outside to avoid a collision. David said he could have used the situation to get a win but decided against it.
“I could have gone tight on Elam and forced (Myers) inside, but JW is a great racer and we were having a great race and it wouldn’t have been right to do it that way today,” said David, the defending national champion who again is first in both driver and boat standings.
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