“We’ll regroup and come back next year.”Īlso out of the Sunday’s competition with a great result in the bank was longtime Fountain Powerboats V-bottom man Ben Robertson, Jr. “But we are happy with our 161-mph run stumbling down the course,” he added, then chuckled. I considered having a new sensor flown in, but it wasn’t the time or place to start trouble-shooting stuff. “About halfway down the course, the port engine stumbled for a millisecond and then regained power. “I had planned on doing two or three runs, but Murphy got us,” Schultz said. One pass down the course would have to be enough. A map sensor issue, according to Faucher, kept them from making another run.Ĭheck out the slideshow above for more images from Sunday’s action on the three-quarter-mile course.Īs it happened, several of Schultz’s business associates had flown into town to watch the boat in action from a center console in the spectator fleet. Minus Dennis and Jason Parvey in their 43-foot Black Thunder V-bottom this year, the Factory Billet crew of owner/driver Jim Schultz and Mike Faucher still came out from Chicagoland for a 161-mph blast on Saturday that, though shy of last year’s Shootout record-setting 164-mph performance, was close to perfection. “I am happy for Don (Onken, the boat’s owner)-it’s American Ethanol’s seventh overall Top Gun win in a row.” “We were working with a sick motor all weekend but we made the best of it,” Cosker said. About an hour before the course closed, Cosker and Battiato ran the 51-footer to 194 mph, enough for overall Top Gun honors but still shy of the 200-mph club of which they are charter members. That run cost them a blower belt on one of their four piston engines that combine to a total output of 12,000-plus hp, but they replaced the belt and headed back out. The longtime cockpit duo followed that up with 180- and 184-mph passes before the course closed for the day, and vowed to return on Sunday.Īnd return they did with a top speed on their first pass of 190 mph. On Saturday, Battiato and Cosker led off with a slow-pokey, at least for them, 175-mph run on the three-quarter-mile course. Photos by Pete Boden/ Shoot 2 Thrill Pixīut it wasn’t to be this year. ![]() ![]() American Ethanol, a 51-foot Mystic Powerboats catamaran driven by Tony Battiato and throttled by company owner John Cosker, had gone seven for seven with such performances since 2014-the same year the Spirit of Qatar Mystic cat reached an untouchable 244 mph on the then mile-long course at the annual Central Missouri event.Īlthough the team didn’t reach its 200-plus-mph goal, Don Onken’s American Ethanol Mystic still won its seventh straight overall Top Gun title at the 33rd annual Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Central Missouri. During the past 10 years, the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout fans have come to expect at least one 200-plus-mph performance.
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