Shaun Torrente Racing Established As Authorized Mercury Racing Dealer And Service Center
Although the team at Shaun Torrente Racing in Southwest Florida, including the three-time F1 H2O world champion himself, has been setting up, dialing in and building brackets for boats powered by Mercury Racing outboard engines for many years, the components business Torrente founded almost 10 years ago had never been an authorized sales or service center for the Fond du Lac, Wis., company that celebrated its 50th anniversary in grand style on Wednesday evening in Charleston, S.C. That changed last week when Torrente, who has been racing Mercury-powered tunnel boats since he was 17 years old, got confirmation from Kevin Skiba, Mercury Racing’s business development manager, that STR’s official account number for sales and service had been established.
The team at Shaun Torrente Racing in Southwest Florida is excited to be the latest authorized Mercury Racing dealer.
“First of all, this is massive for STR and for our guys handling the boat side of the business—they’re super excited,” said Torrente, who attended the Mercury gala (below) with his wife, Flavia, and daughter, Isabella, and got to do some celebrating of his own by sharing the good news amongst his peers. “To be honest, this means a lot to me because of my personal history with Mercury, mostly racing of course—all three of my overseas UIM championships were with Mercury power and all of my U.S. titles were as well. But also because I’ve been involved with some behind-the-scenes development stuff with Mercury, but I was never really ‘on the team’ if you know what I mean. This changes that perspective for me.
“This is going to be great because we have so many clients with MTIs, Skaters, Statements, you name it,” he continued. “We’re excited to be an official outboard dealer and are eager to get started on some repowers. It’s also nice to know we’re going to be able to do what we do best with support from Mercury.”
Torrente credited Skiba for helping him through the process and for doing his due diligence. He added that a big reason he was able to apply for dealer status was the new 12,000-square-foot facility STR moved into recently.
“We needed the commercial facility to show we had space for the boats and the service work—our small test shop/race shop didn’t quite cut it,” Torrente said. “We’ve got the new building plus the production facility now so we’re in a good place…finally. I’m officially excited to say that we’re a Mercury Racing repower center in the Fort Myers area so give us a call if you need anything.”
Torrente, who already has three repowers lined up for customers ordering the new 500R engines Mercury unveiled this week in South Carolina, said that several members of the STR crew, including 450R Factory Stock-class 151 Express teammates Nick Imprescia and Ian Morgan, will be attending training classes in Fond du Lac in the near future.
Related stories
Inside The Mercury Racing 500R Outboard Engine
500 And 50—Mercury Racing Goes Big For Golden Anniversary
Mercury Racing Kicks Off 50th Anniversary Celebration In V-10 Outboard Style
Inside The SOTW Mag Couples Therapy Issue—Torrente’s Take
Image Of The Week: Air Torrente At The Lake Of The Ozarks
In The Lead Video Series Flashback: Shaun Torrente
.
