Detroit Gold Cup 2011

       One of my "Net Friends", Ginger Jackson, invited us to come see her team Our Gang Racing compete in the H1 Unlimited Hydroplane races at the 2011 Detroit Gold Cup.  Ginger is a volunteer and is responsible for preparing the U-17 Miss Red Dot's cockpit for the race.    I know Ginger from a couple of forums, Facebook, etc...  I always try to meet my net friends, sometimes I've traveled a few hundred miles out of the way to do it.  When one of those friends actually comes to my area, AND she's accompanied by a 150+ mph boat.  That's not an opportunity I'm not going to pass up. 

Ginger was kind enough to arrange for Pit passes for Sara and I and it was really great to get some behind the scenes exposure.


The Pit trucks are really well laid out, organized with plenty of working space and necessary equipment.

They tear these things down between every race. They don't usually swap engines and many teams don't have spares ($90-125K ea) but they can if they need to.

Just as we were walking out of the bathroom, this guy broke through over the pits. It's a good thing we just used the head, we'd have probably wet ourselves.

Picture is right side up.

They were running this series when we first got there, I think's it's called "Superstock USA" but I'm not sure.

They ran the offshore series also they were pretty damn loud boats.

This is about as close as I caught to catching a good propwalk.

These are the same guys as the Discovery channel show, they actually won their series.

This is my favorite shot in the whole series. We were guests of the Red Dot team. They came in last in this heat (Sometimes a brilliant stragegy doesn't pan out) but they won the earlier heat and did accumulate enough points to be the points leader in the series.

This guy had problems later.

I love the deck-to-deck shots.

Dave Villwock won this heat, and the Gold Cup.  This also made him the winning-est driver in H1 History.

Oops. That's not supposed to do that.

He finished the race that way though. First time an H1 boat ever completed a race with a busted canard wing.

Ginger is with the U-17 Our Gang Racing  Red Dot Corp sponsord boat.  Very dedicated racers, they put on a really good show.

If they took "Rooster Tail Turn" wide, they'd get really, REALLY close to the seawall, especially if you consider it's a boat going `~150mph.

Ginger was presented with the Vic Nelawake Spirit Award. She's the first recipient, besides Vic himself, who received it posthumously.