Factory Billet Shootout Update—One And Done On Saturday Morning
The owner and pilot of the 51-foot Factory Billet Outerlimits V-bottom headed to the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Central Missouri this weekend, Jim Schultz leads a complicated and often quick-changing life. So even when I’m driving, I take his calls—hands-free of course—as I’ve come to know he doesn’t waste time chatting.
Factory Billet’s Jim Schultz plans to make just one run on Saturday this weekend on the three-quarter-mile course. Photo by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix
Case in point? Just 30 minutes outside of Osage Beach, Mo., he called, ostensibly for the location and start time of the Bob Morgan Memorial Lake of the Ozarks Shootout Hall of Fame dinner, where he’s being inducted tonight. I told him I would send him that information when I stopped driving.
He told me he was getting on a plane in Lake Zurich, Ill., and would be about 30 minutes behind me.
“New plan for the weekend,” he said. “We are going to have the boat in the water at 9 a.m. Saturday morning and do the first run of the day. One run, then the boat goes back on the trailer so I can fly back to Florida for my daughter’s birthday. No way you miss your five-year-old girl’s birthday party.”
I asked if he’d be returning for Sunday’s competition if his Saturday goal of reaching 190 mph or better didn’t pan out.
“I can’t,” Schultz said. “I have business overseas and I have to leave early Sunday morning. We either get it Saturday or we don’t.
“The good news is we’ve done a lot of work on the boat and I think we have eliminated our boost-control issue, which as you know has been our Achilles heel,” he continued. “When we tested last week on Lake Michigan, we hit 127 mph in the same time it took us to hit 120 mph last year.”
Schultz said he couldn’t remember the exact time that took. “I’ll ask Mike and tell you tonight at the party,” he said, then laughed. “But I can only stay an hour or so. I’m heading to Florida tonight. I have a meeting in Sarasota tomorrow.”
A complicated life indeed.
Related Story: Coverage Of The 2024 Lake Of The Ozarks Shootout
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