Joey Imprescia Remembered—A Champion On and Off the Racecourse

Nick and Debbie Imprescia stood beside the hospital bed of his father and her husband, Joey Imprescia, in the latter’s final moments. He had suffered multiple cardiac arrests and each time the doctors revived him, they were just doing more damage.

All business on the racecourse and a portrait in humility off it, Joey Imprescia was a throttleman’s throttleman. Photos courtesy of the Imprescia family.
Joey Imprescia was best known by many as one of the greatest throttlemen in offshore racing history, but to a select few he was a giving, caring father, husband and friend.
Nick, 24, with the composure of someone twice his age, took his father’s hand.

(From left) Birds of a feather, Nick Imprescia, John Tomlinson, Joe Imprescia and Randy Scism flocked together.
“Look at me,” he said. “You became the best father I could have ever imagined and thank you for that. Thank you for giving me mom, thank you for giving me you and thank you for giving me me.”
Father and son continued to hold hands and Joey passed. Then Nick turned to the nurses and doctors gathered in the room with tears running down their faces and said, “Thank you for everything you’ve done for my dad and thank you for letting me have this moment.”

Nick Imprescia didn’t know it at the times, but he started training early with one of the greatest throttlemen the offshore racing world would ever know.
Nick unknowingly had done exactly what his father would have done in that situation. He made the moment about everyone else in the room. Joey Imprescia passed away in the early evening on January 30, a couple of months shy of his 68th birthday. The guy who looked like he was carved from granite throughout most of his offshore powerboat racing career battled health issues in the last few months of 2024 and the start of this year.
He was a legendary throttleman in offshore powerboat racing since the late 1980s. But to those he knew another Imprescia, he was caring husband, father and friend. His breakfast sandwiches and pasta sauce were the stuff of legend.

Imprescia enjoyed significant success with the WHM Motorsports team.
“If the garbage man was picking up while dad was cooking, he would have to take 30 minutes to come inside and eat with us,” said Nick.
I first met Joey Imprescia at the Gateway Powerboat Regatta in Greenwich, Conn., in 1987. The Lavin family and the crew behind the Jesse James offshore racing team had chosen Joey to replace Mark Lavin after he was killed in an offshore racing accident. He was early in his racing career, but there was already a larger-than-life aura about Imprescia.
One of the people behind the Jesse James team was Rich Luhrs who had met Joey Imprescia when he was working for an Evinrude dealership on New York’s Long Island. Luhrs needed to do a photo shoot on his new Shadow 21 outboard powered performance boat for the New York Boat Show. It was January and Imprescia helped launch the boat and provided a second boat for the camera crew.
A Tight Circle
Imprescia then made his first trip to Mercury Hi-Performance’s secret testing ground, Lake X, to help Luhrs and Joey DeTore, another Long Island boat mechanic, test the 30-foot Shadow Cat for the first time. Luhrs and Imprescia remained friends for decades, meeting every Saturday for lunch and Luhrs would be trackside on Sundays for Nick’s go-kart races with boatbuilder George Linder.

Imprescia’s admirers included Skater catamaran builder Peter Hledin and his son, Michael.
“Joe was the best rough-water throttleman I ever saw,” said Luhrs. “The thing that differentiated him from so many champions was the fact that he was humble. He never put himself first. He never thought he was as good as he was.”
Luhrs recalled a time when they were at Imprescia’s home in Babylon, N.Y., on Long Island and a neighbor’s boat across the canal was sinking. “Joey dove into the canal fully clothed, plugged the leaking bellows with his shirt and helped get the boat out of the water,” he said.
A Superboat that had been built on Long Island showed up at Bobby Moore’s Custom Marine in North Miami in the 1980s, and the late Moore had to do a double take. It was rigged the way he would have done the work.
Some research revealed that the boat had been rigged at Imprescia’s shop, East Coast Marine Performance. Moore tracked down Imprescia and the two formed a friendship.

Throttling the How Sweet It is catamaran was among Imprescia’s many gigs during the years.
Imprescia was abandoned by his mother and father when he was a baby and was raised by his grandmother. Moore became a father figure to Imprescia.
“He always told me Bobby taught him how to be a throttleman and how to run a race team,” recalled Nick.
One day the two were in Moore’s office and anyone who knows Moore can close his/her eyes and picture him saying the following: “Son, if you ever took off those New York cowboy boots and got serious, you’ll probably be a pretty good throttleman.”
Imprescia took off his boots, put them on Moore’s desk and said, “Let’s go.”
Billy Moore, Bobby’s son and the current throttleman for Team DeFalco in Pro Class 1, said that he remembered Joe Imprescia always being around his dad’s shop and the two throttlemen spent most of their time at races together.
‘Even though he looked like a bruiser, Joey’s always been the nicest, kindest guy I’ve ever met,” said Billy Moore. “He was a good solid guy, solid throttleman, mechanic and rigger. He was so well rounded with so many things.”
Working His Way Up
Superboat founder John Coen built his boats on Long Island and Joey Imprescia bought one of his early 16-footers. “I don’t know what he put on it for a motor, but he broke the bottom twice,” Coen said of Imprescia.
Later in his offshore career, Imprescia built his own 30-foot Superboat cat, East Coast Marine, that he and DeTore used to set a record for the Modified Class at the Suncoast Powerboat Grand Prix in Sarasota, Fla. “He was one of the first guys on Long who could make a boat go faster,” said Coen. “My customers brought boats to him to rig.”
The other manufacturer that Imprescia enjoyed a long relationship with was Douglas Marine, the builder of Skater high-performance catamarans. “Joey loved the sport and that’s why he was so successful,” said Douglas Marine president Peter Hledin. “I don’t care what the boat was, Joey would get in and race it. He was a natural.”
Former Mercury Racing president Fred Kiekhaefer joined Hledin in praising Imprescia’s skills and both said the throttleman and rigger had strong opinions that sometimes bordered on stubbornness. “But that’s because he was usually right,” Kiekhaefer added.
One of Imprescia’s many in-boat partners was fellow Long Islander Billy Mauff, who currently races a 40-foot Skater, WHM Motorsports. The duo started in a 35-foot Activator, Hot & Nasty, in Modified class, but enjoyed their greatest success in a 46-foot Skater that ran in the Open and Superboat classes.
Elite Company
“In the world of real throttlemen, you had Bobby Moore, Joe Imprescia, Steve Curtis and Jay Muller,” said Mauff. “They are the good throttlemen who keep you alive and don’t put you upside down.”
Mauff recalled a race in Corpus Christi, Texas, when he woke up at about 4 a.m. and heard a raceboat running. It was Imprescia and Nick Casaula out testing WHM Motorsports. “I get dressed and go down there and there’s Joey and Nick sitting there giggling,” recalled Mauff.

Imprescia throttled more than a few well-known catamarans during his career.
If Bobby Moore was credited with mentoring Imprescia’s throttling skills, Stuart Hayim, who tapped Imprescia to throttle for his Recovery racing team, could be pointed to as the person who helped smooth out some of his throttlemen’s rough edges. A businessman from Long Island, Hayim helped Imprescia expand his vocabulary so he would be more comfortable being interviewed.
Hayim felt the relationship between him and Imprescia was like that of brothers. “When he was looking for me or vice versa, I would say 2 feet to the left,” said Hayim, now 78. He said the in-cockpit team scored 57 victories in 63 races, including earning the right to fly the coveted US1 on their boat three times.

Joey and Debbie Imprescia celebrated many checkered flags together.
“When we would win, he would always say, ‘Go up on the bow and get your flag,’” said Hayim. “He was not a talker or a bragger. Every victory was Stuart’s not Joey’s.”
In another example of Imprescia’s selflessness, in a race in Barnegat Bay, N.J., Hayim was in a different boat early in his career. He came up on a buoy and got confused about if he should turn. Imprescia was alongside in an open-cockpit boat and held his hand over the side pointing ahead, telling Hayim to go straight and not turn.
A Dedicated Father
But all those relationships pale to the one that Joey Imprescia formed with his son that Debbie was told she could never give him. At times, Nick Imprescia said he couldn’t believe that a man who had been abandoned as a baby figured out how to be such a good father.

An inseparable couple, Joey and Debbie Imprescia were dedicated to their son, Nick.
Some of it could have come from the support group that formed around Joey Imprescia. After he passed, one of his closest friends asked all their mutual friends, “How did we meet?” and the answer always was, “We met at Joey’s shop.” Nick said his father learned early on that family isn’t about bloodlines or last names.
“He recognized the real side of a family,” said Nick. “It was the people who came to the shop every day with a bag of donuts, a cup of coffee, a toy for his son and flowers for his wife.”
Hollywood hero looks, endless talent and a working man’s humility—Joey Imprescia had all three going for him.
He continued, “It was the family that he raced with and worked with. He instilled in me that friends are the people you choose to spend time with.”
When he was growing up, Nick said that his father explained why he didn’t tell him he loved him often, “We don’t need to say it because we know it,” he recalled
Then when Nick and best friend Ian Morgan headed out in Nick’s 21-foot Superboat for the duo’s first offshore powerboat race in Barnegat Bay, N.J., his dad called him and said, “Like I always told you, they’re not ready for you. Show them what you’ve got. I love you.”

Captured here with fellow offshore racer Chris Lavin (left), Joey Imprescia was a larger than life figure in offshore powerboat racing. Photo by Daniel Pusateri. Photo courtesy Chris LaMorte.
Nick recalled, “I was driving a boat to the start and I was balling my eyes out. Afterwards, I handed him the checkered flag from my first boat race and he said, ‘I love you’ every day after that.”
Nick said that with his first victory, “(My dad) told me that out of all the championships and traveling the world and building a prospering business I was his greatest accomplishment.”
Years later, after Nick Imprescia and Morgan had won their first world championship in 2023 in the 32-foot Phantom, 151 Express, Joey Imprescia was sitting on a bollard in Key West Harbor, waiting for them to return.
“He had his feet crossed and he was sitting there with a big smile and he said, ‘I told you they ain’t ready for you,’” said Nick.

Though Imprescia took his role in the sport seriously, he never took himself that way.
Like father like son, Nick has grown to realize that his family is made up of the friends he has made in the high-performance boating and racing world. Whether it’s his boss Shaun Torrente and the employees at STR Racing or second-generation racers like Billy Moore and Brit Lilly, both of whom reached out to Nick as soon as they heard about his dad and said, if you need to call, it doesn’t matter white time it is.
The three exchanged texts, saying “Our three dads are probably at Lake X right now, changing the rotation on some Number Six drives and f-ing up some sh*t.”
Looking ahead, Nick Imprescia says, “I wanted to be a boat racer and an influencer. I want to help people enjoy themselves because that’s what my dad did.”
Speedonthewater.com will have information on a celebration of life for Joey Imprescia when we have details. For those worried about the attire, it’s blue jeans and a black T-shirt.
And no, you’ll never look as good in them as Joey Imprescia did.

Long ago, Joey Imprescia told is son, Nick, that the offshore racing world wasn’t ready for him. Father knew best.
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Catching Up With Nick Imprescia And Ian Morgan Of Team 151 Express
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Nick Imprescia and appeared with fellow legacy, Brit Lilly, whose father was famed throttleman Art Lilly, in an episode of Water Street Confidential. Produced by Scrapyard Media and speedonthewater.com, the series celebrated the 50th anniversary of Mercury Racing.
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