From Surface To Six—Inside The Monster Energy/M CON Drive Conversion

You weren’t alone if you noticed something different about the Class 1 Monster Energy/M CON Skater Powerboats raceboat on display during last weekend’s Performance Boat Center Open House and Boat Show in Osage Beach, Mo. You also weren’t alone if you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. Plenty of folks walked right by the 43-foot catamaran without noticing its shaft drives and rudder had been replaced by Mercury Racing No. 6 drives.

Notice anything different in this image? Photo from the 2024 Performance Boat Center Open House and Boat Show by Jeff Helmkamp copyright Jeff Helmkamp Photos.

But to be fair, there was a lot to ogle during the two-day Performance Boat Center happening.

When Super Cat-class M CON team owner/throttleman Tyler Miller decided to start building a Class 1 raceboat in early 2022, he initially envisioned having No. 6 drives put the power from the cat’s spec Mercury Racing 1100 Comp engines to the water. Miller, driver Myrick Coil and team manager Jake Leckliter knew the No. 6 drive’s capabilities and setup options from their multi world- and national-championship-proven Super Cat program. They were comfortable with them on the transom.

Yet the prevailing wisdom in the Class 1 ranks is that surface drives and rudder steering are essential if winning is among a team’s goals. So that was the way they went and eventually, meaning the week before the 2023 Class 1 season-opener in Cocoa Beach, Fla., the Monster Energy/M CON raceboat was born.

The Class 1 learning curve was steep for the team for the first half of its rookie season. But by the end of the 2023 Union International Motonautique Class 1 World Championship Series, Monster Energy/M CON had notched three podium results on its way to a fourth-place overall finish.

And yet Miller and Coil still were not convinced that surface drives and a rudder were the right choice for them. In fact, they were confident they would do just as well, if not better, with No. 6 drives.

During the 2023 Race World Offshore Key West World Championships, they decided to have Skater handle the conversion in the off season.

“We had all this knowledge we had gained over the years running No. 6 drives in Super Cat,” Miller explained. “We know a lot about setup with them. The surface drives were a whole new animal and we just weren’t comfortable with them. Myrick and I wanted to set up the Class 1 boat the way we had come to know with No. 6 drives.

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The drive conversion process was by no means simple. Photos courtesy Tyler Miller/Monster Energy/M CON Racing.

“So in Key West last year we decided to make the change to No. 6 drives for the 2024 season,” he continued. “When I sat down with (Mercury Racing director) Jeff Broman and told him what I wanted to do, he looked at me like I was crazy. But he said he wanted to be involved and was sure he could make it work”

The former head of engineering for Mercury Racing, Broman recalled the Key West meeting.

“We were there and Peter (Hledin) of Skater was there, so we had all the right players in one place and started talking about it,” he said. “Peter was all for it and we talked about some of the details of how to do it—it was major surgery on the boat. But everybody was up for it.

“We were very confident that the No. 6 package would work in Class 1,” he added.” Technically speaking, it was really straight forward.”

Added Miller, “By December, the guys at Skater had removed the surface drives and rudder and were chopping off the back end of the boat to start creating a blank transom,”

But even with the catamaran’s reconfigured transoms, the conversion was anything but plug-and-play. The 1,100 hp turbocharged engines had been aligned for surface drives. That meant they needed to be removed, repositioned and reinstalled on new mounting rails. The engine compartment also required re-rigging.

“They knocked it out of the park at Skater,” said Miller. “From the rigging to the transoms to the drives, it’s beautiful.”

Skater created a “blank transom” for the 42-footer.

The boat was completed in mid-March and hauled to the Lake of the Ozarks. Miller and Coil took it out for a shake-down cruise the day after it arrived.

“First things first, we wanted to make sure we could get it on plane,” Miller said, then laughed. “Then we pushed it to the limit. And we were happy.”

They are equally pleased with the setup flexibility afforded by the No. 6 drives. Under Class 1 rules, teams with surface drives are limited to three different propellers. But with No. 6 drives, teams can use as many propellers as they want. In just their first test session, Miller and Coil tested three sets of props.

“We’ll go back and do more testing during the first week in May,” said Miller, who will compete this weekend against fellow Monster Energy-backed athletes in a P1 AquaX “celebrity challenge” in Daytona Beach, Fla. “Then it’s off to the Class 1 season-opener in Cocoa Beach.”