KANKAKEE, IL. - Herd Racing's entry in the APBA's Power Boat National Championships suffered engine trouble in Sunday's season-finale, finishing a disappointing 14th to end the 2010 season.
The boat had turned in just the 11th fastest qualifying time in Saturday's single boat timed laps and finished 7th and 5th in two Saturday afternoon 10-lap sprint qualifiers.
"The weather there was horrible Friday with high winds which cancelled pretty much most of the day's practice events on the water," Herd crew chief Jeramey Wentz said. "A couple boats blew over on Friday and the winds continued on Saturday when a couple more boats blew over, so it was pretty tense on the water all weekend."
Pilot Dana Tomes took the Herd boat to the water for Saturday morning's qualifying events with zero practice laps at the famed national course on the Kankakee River just south of Chicago.
"We had to try to run our fastest lap of the weekend on our first lap of the weekend when there were 20 mile-per-hour wind gusts so I left a whole lot out there in qualifying," Tomes said. "We were told that since it was our first trip to the Nationals that we were going to go to the end of the pack regardless of where we qualified so I didn't push the boat too much on Saturday."
On Sunday, the team started the National Championship Final from the 14th starting spot in the 16 boat field on a delayed two-flag start.
"Same story as last time out. End of the dock and held two or three seconds from the pack before we could take off," Tomes said. "I know it is an APBA rule that is in place to keep rookies from getting mixed up with the leaders and causing a wreck, but it basically puts the rookie boats in a position where they don't have a chance to compete."
Regardless of where the #75 team started, Tomes said there were only a few laps on the board when the boat's Evinrude outboard began losing power.
"We were down to less than six thousand RPMs at the end of the race and had to ride around out in the third lane all day to stay out of the way. I could tell that after a few laps the pack just began pulling away and by the end of the race we were wide open and the leaders were passing us like we were sitting still."
After completing the 20-lap feature, two laps off the pace of race winner Sam LaBanco, Wentz and crew tore into the boat before packing up for the season.
"We were about 24 degrees off in timing from where it should have been," said Chief Engineer Eric Himes. "It was a wonder it was running as good as it was, but we have to find out what is happening. We suspect the flywheel key sheared allowing the firing timing to jump, but we'll have to pull the flywheel when we get back to the shop and see what's going inside. That is what happened to us at Marietta earlier this year and shearing a key isn't something that should happen very often so there is something going on inside the motor."
Tomes said the APR SuperLeague and APBA should announce the final 2010 standings in the next few days.
"We only had one race we didn't finish all year and we should be solidly in the Top 10 in the national points race so it was a good year for us," Tomes said.
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