Morpheus 8 Heading To Key West As Class 1 Dark Horse

With just two races remaining this season in the Union Internationale Motonautique Class 1 World Championship Series was poised for a cliff-hanger finish with the Monster Energy/M CON team leading the Defalco team by just 13 points and Defalco surging after taking three consecutive checkered flags. Yet the drama in the class never materialized thanks to a pair of hurricanes that hit Southwest Florida in less than two weeks and forced the organizers to cancel the late-September Race World Offshore Clearwater Nationals and this weekend’s Powerboat P1/P1 Offshore St. Petersburg Grand Prix. Though no one knew it, the season ended quietly after the Sarasota Powerboat Grand Prix and Monster Energy/M CON earned its first UIM Class 1 World Championship title

Morpheus 8 finished second at the Sarasota Powerboat Grand Prix in September. Photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

Three teams—Defalco, df Young/Good Boy Vodka and Monster Energy/M CON—dominated the Class 1 discussion this season. The XINSURANCE team got a late start courtesy of repairs needed after its MTI catamaran flipped during last year’s Race World Offshore Key West World Championships, and never found its footing on the racecourse in 2024. Team driver Randy Kent and throttleman Brit Lilly are hoping to flip the script in the three-race Race World Offshore/American Power Boat Association Offshore Key West World Championships set for November 3-10.

Owned and driven by sportscar racer Carlos de Quesada and throttled by John Tomlinson, the Morpheus 8 team entered, as de Quesada announced at the beginning of the season, just two UIM Class 1 World Championship events this season. Running the largest, heaviest and widest Victory-built catamaran in the mostly Victory fleet—a 43-footer measured at the waterline as compared to the 41-footers run by the teams with Victory catamarans—Morpheus 8 finished second in Thunder On Cocoa Beach and the Sarasota Powerboat Grand Prix.

And that makes the team an intriguing dark-horse entry for the worlds.Tomlinson believes that if conditions for the Wednesday, Friday and Sunday races are rough on at least one of those days, Morpheus 8 has a solid chance for an overall podium finish.

Said Tomlinson, “We go into the water 800 to 1,000 pounds heavier than any boat in our class.”

“We go into the water 800 to 1,000 pounds heavier than any boat in our class,” Tomlinson. “We don’t get out of the turns nearly as quick as the Victory 41-footers like 222 Offshore, which is coming to Key West this year. Over a race with 20 to 30 turns, that makes a difference.

“But we were catching Billy and Mike in Defalco in Sarasota,” he added. “We got around df Young and were reeling them. Of course, reeling them in and passing them are two different things. It would have taken us two or three more laps just to reel them in, and we ran out of laps. But our fastest lap, on the last lap, was faster than theirs.”

Though Tomlinson is among the most quietly competitive and upbeat racers in the sport, he’s also brutally realistic with his expectations.

Morpheus 8 took second place in the 2024 UIM Class 1 World Championship season-opener owner in Cocoa Beach, Fla.

“I don’t think we’re a first-place boat like 222 or Defalco, unless it’s rough,” he added. “All we can do is hope for rough water. Anything can happen in Key West—you still have to finish and there are three races.”