The 2024 offshore race season starts off with a bang in the Florida Keys.
By Gregg Mansfield
Photos by Jeff Gerardi/freezeframevideo.net
Drive by Tampa Bay on a random weekday and there’s a good chance you’ll see Logan Adan and Ricky Maldonado running their new 38-foot new Doug Wright.
“We spend a lot of time on the water, at least two hours a day,” said Maldonado, throttleman for the Montlick Injury Attorneys Stock 450 boat. “We set up different tracks and we just go do laps, try different things, different setups and different propellers to dial it in.”
The seat time made the difference as Adan and Maldonado won Stock 450 at the season-opening 7 Mile Offshore Grand Prix hosted by Race World Offshore in late April. The pair went into the Marathon, Fla., race with a new hull and a new crew, yet had high expectations for the 2024 season.
“We knew exactly what we had,” Maldonado said. “I was very confident that we were going to win, we were not going there just to race. We were there to win.”
The duo set up the Doug Wright catamaran for acceleration rather than top-end speed, and the decision proved right after going into the first turn. MF Racing and T/S Motorsports had the lead at the start, but Montlick Injury Attorneys never looked back in the class that featured six boats.
“They probably had 3 or 4 mph on us,” Maldonado said about his competitor’s top-end speed. “We came out of the first corner, and we knew they had nothing against us.”
Adan and Maldonado finished nearly a minute faster than Stock 450 second-place finisher G.C. Racing Team and MF Racing, which placed third.
The offshore season opener in the Florida Keys featured 41 boats racing in 10 classes. This year’s race conditions were far different than 2023 that had strong winds and heavy rains, forcing organizers to end the race early because of the weather conditions.
Mother Nature played nice for the second annual 7 Mile Offshore Grand Prix. Organizers ran the races clockwise this year, a change that was generally liked by the racers.
“It’s a fun course. We love those style courses with a dogleg in them because we do a lot of cart and car racing, which has a lot of turns,” said Steven Fehrmann, driver for Sun Print El Bandido Tequila. “It really brings a different avenue to the boat racing instead of just holding it in a straight line, making a 180, holding it in a straight line. It gives you more options for passing.”
While some teams were using the Marathon race as a shakeout for the upcoming season, others used it as a barometer for in-class competitors. One class that is deep and competitive this season is the Super Stock class, which had 10 boats at the offshore race. The Marathon race kicked off the Super Stock season that includes eight races leading up to the Key West Championship in November.
To illustrate how competitive the Super Stocks will be this season, the top four finishers in Marathon—Jackhammer, S2 Powerboats, Team Bermuda and Celsius—finished within 30 seconds of each other. Jackhammer won the race on the water but when trophies were being handed out at Sunset Grille, it was a surprise to see S2 Powerboats’ Sean Conner and Shaun Torrente accepting the first-place award in Super Stock. Count Conner among those surprised.
“That was a surprising turn of events,” Conner said.
Jackhammer’s Reese Langheim and Julian Maldonado were assessed a 10-minute penalty for not taking their Victory catamaran directly to tech inspection after the race. The team called it a miscommunication and finished seventh after the penalty.
