Class 1 df Young Team Making Power Move To Mercury Racing 1100s
Buoyed by a second-place finish in their first Class 1 outing last weekend at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix in Southwest Florida, the df Young team of owner/throttleman Rich Wyatt and driver Marc Granet plans to order a set of Mercury Racing 1100 Comp engines for their 50-foot Mystic raceboat this week. Though the team should have the engines in time for the final three races of the Class 1 World Championships, which run concurrently November 7-13 with the American Power Boat Association Offshore World Championships for the Super Cat and Super Stock classes in Key West, Fla., they likely will install them for the 2023 season.
The Class 1 df Young team will have Mercury Racing 1100 Comp engines under the hatches of its 50-foot Mystic catamaran for the 2023 season. Photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.
“We were told if we got the deposit to Mercury Racing quickly we could them in time for Key West, but there are a lot of things we have to do to get the boat ready for them,” said Wyatt. “We aren’t completely sure yet, but probably we are going to wait until after Key West. But better to order them now and have them. We don’t want to be scrambling or waiting next season.
“We will definitely run our Stotler engines for the next Class 1 race in Clearwater (Fla.) later this month,” he added.
The quad-cam four-valve, turbocharged 1,100-hp engines from the Fond du Lac, Wis., company—a key backer of the Class 1 series—have been “spec power” since its revival by P1 Offshore began in 2019. The organizers made exceptions for the df Young team and the JBS Racing team, both of which run 1,100-hp engines from other builders (Stotler Engines for df Young and Sixteen Power for JBS Racing) to help “build the class,” according Azam Rangoonwala, the chief executive officer of Powerboat P1/P1 Offshore, the producer of the Class 1 Offshore World Championship Series.
The team’s decision came as particularly welcome news to Rangoonwala.
“The df Young team’s choice to buy the 1100s is both a testament to what we are building with Class 1 as well as to the relationship we have with Mercury Racing,” he said. “It was great to have an additional team in St. Pete and we look forward to seeing df Young contend for the World Championship in 2023—they are clearly competitive.
In its first Class 1 contest last weekend, df Young claimed second place.
Wyatt and Granet have raced in several top-tier, high-attrition classes during the years. But both were impressed with what they saw in Class 1 competition and P1 Offshore professionalism last weekend.
“Class 1 is great, P1 is great,” said Wyatt. “With a good number of boats in the field now and more coming—and P1’s television package—it will be a lot easier to attract sponsors than it has been.
“And it’s really nice to look out of the cockpit window and see other raceboats with you on the course,” he added, then laughed.
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