1987 Miller American Thunderboat Classic
Hydroplane driver Hanauer looks for win at Onondaga
SYRACUSE (AP) - Chip Hanauer, the winningest active hydroplane driver, hopes a return to Syracuse for the Miller High Life Thunderboat Classic also will mean a return to winning form.
Since capturing last year’s race on Onondaga Lake, Hanauer has taken his share of bumps while going winless. Aside from second-place finishes at Tri-Cities, Wash., Seattle, and Detroit, Hanauer and the Miller team have failed to finish any other races.
“We’ve had every kind of problem a racing team can have,” Hanauer said. “A lot of proven components on the boat that we really believed were trouble-free, we’ve managed to have some failures with. And some new components indeed have caused problems.”
All this after the Miller American team switched to a new, lighter boat with different aerodynamic properties and weight distribution.
“The new boat hasn’t handled as well as we liked. You never know with a new boat,” Hanauer said.
First, at Evansville, Ind., an oil leak in the gear box led to a fire on the boat. In the Tri-Cities race, a broken propeller shaft caused a blade to break and fly into a rear wing, and there was a structural failure in Seattle, when a key brace cracked.
Due to the latest damage, the Miller American team will be pulling out the old hydroplane, which was last used at Las Vegas in September 1986, for this weekend’s race on Onondaga Lake. It is the same boat Hanauer piloted to win last year’s hydroplane classic here.
“We haven’t won a race in a year. That’s something I’d like to change,” Hanauer said. “We’re the real underdogs. In that situation we go in with the idea we’ll do the best we can. We’ll try to race a safe race. It’s dangerous if you’re frustrated to do things to win that you wouldn’t ordinarily do.”
Standing in Hanauer’s way is the Miss Budweiser team, led by driver Jim Kropfeld. Kropfeld, who has won five of the six races he’s entered this season, is first in the world championship point standings. The Miss Budweiser team is coming off an Aug. 2 victory in the Budweiser Cup on Seattle’s Lake Washington.
Hanauer and Kropfeld top a field of at least 10 unlimited hydroplanes for Sunday’s race, up from last year’s field of seven.
(Reprinted from the Associated Press, August 22, 1987)