Thirty-four stories from the archive. Champions, builders, outlaws, celebrities and the races that defined a sport. Every article researched and written by Powerboat News.

The People

The men and women who built offshore and circuit racing from scratch, won world championships, and left the sport changed.

Reggie Fountain

101 wins, a billion-dollar company, and a Christmas ham he gave to every employee every year. The North Carolina boat builder who dominated offshore racing for two decades.

Fabio Buzzi

The Italian engineer who built faster boats than anyone else, won the Cowes-Torquay race into his seventies, and held more water speed records than most people know exist.

Fabio Buzzi’s Code X

A catamaran that could run at high speed on minimal power, conceived in the 1990s and largely ignored. The design principles it established are standard practice today.

Renato Molinari

Eighteen world championships across F1, F2 and endurance racing. The Italian from Padua who turned circuit powerboat racing into a science.

Cees van der Velden

The Flying Dutchman. Multiple F1 world titles at Gold Racing, a career spanning three decades, and a quietly towering influence on European circuit racing.

Al Copeland

The Popeyes chicken founder spent millions turning offshore racing into a corporate spectacle, won six national championships, and died building a 12,000-horsepower record attempt.

Daniel Scioli

World offshore champion, then Governor of Buenos Aires Province, then Argentine Cabinet Minister. The career trajectory that nobody in powerboat racing has come close to matching.

Rocky Aoki

The Benihana restaurant founder who survived a near-fatal offshore crash and then survived the criminal justice system. One of the most improbable figures in the sport’s history.

George Morales

Offshore racing champion. CIA-connected drug trafficker. Congressional witness. The story of what happened when the Miami offshore scene of the 1980s met the Contra affair.

Ted Toleman

Before Toleman Motorsport launched Ayrton Senna’s Formula One career, Ted Toleman was racing offshore powerboats out of Cougar Marine. The powerboat years the F1 histories omit.

Phil Rolla

The Swiss engineer who brought scientific rigour to surface-piercing propeller design. His Rolla SP props won Class 1 world championships. The man who took the black art out of prop design.

John D. D’Elia

Auto Armor’s Special Edition was one of the most recognised boats in 1980s offshore racing. The story of the New Jersey businessman and the Jaguar-powered catamaran that carried his name.

Chris Kaye

In 1982, Chris Kaye set the diesel water speed record at 124.24 mph on Coniston Water in Miss Britain IV. An obituary and the story of the record that stood for decades.

Fausto Atzori Stain

Italian offshore pioneer and boat designer who raced and built in the sport’s most competitive years. Died in April 2026 aged 85. An appreciation of a life spent on the water.

Celebrity Crossover

Famous names from film, sport, music and politics who found their way to the starting line.

Don Johnson

The Miami Vice star built Team USA, won the 1988 world offshore championship in the Superboat class, and the 50-foot catamaran he raced has now come up for sale.

Chuck Norris

In 1990, Chuck Norris raced Al Copeland’s championship-winning Popeyes catamaran off Long Beach. He won. The full story of how the martial arts star became a powerboat champion.

Nigel Mansell

Before the Formula One world championship, Mansell raced a UIM Formula One powerboat at the 1982 British Grand Prix on the River Thames. A story the F1 record books do not contain.

Donald Trump

In the 1980s, Donald Trump promoted an offshore powerboat race from his Atlantic City casino. What happened when real-estate spectacle met the offshore racing world.

Adriano Panatta

Italy’s 1976 French Open champion and Davis Cup hero spent his off-seasons racing offshore powerboats. The tennis world never knew. The powerboat world did.

ABBA

In 1974, all four ABBA members fronted a Swedish outboard motor campaign. The brand, the archipelago, and the forgotten photographs from the year Waterloo went to number one.

Manufacturers and Machinery

The builders, the engines and the brands that defined what offshore and circuit racing looked like.

Cougar Marine

Brownie Goldrup and Don Shead built the first Cougar in a Hounslow back street in 1969. Twenty-five years later the company had won every major offshore title in the world. The full history, 1969 to 1994.

The Boat That Started Sunseeker

Before the superyachts, before the Bond films, there was one fast boat built in Poole that set the direction for everything that followed. The origin story Sunseeker rarely tells.

The Lamborghini Offshore V12

Between 1990 and 1995, a Lamborghini V12 engine dominated Class 1 offshore racing in a way no single powerplant has before or since. The story of Class 1’s most feared engine.

Force Outboards

Chrysler made them, US Marine ran them into the ground, and Mercury eventually absorbed the brand. The budget outboard that divided a generation of boaters and mechanics.

Whatever Happened to Mariner?

Mariner outboards were everywhere in the 1970s and 1980s. Then they quietly disappeared. The Mercury story that nobody quite explains, and where the brand went.

The AMPS Models That Went Racing

AMPS produced the finest scale models of offshore and circuit racing boats. What made them exceptional, who commissioned them, and the race teams that carried them to events.

Events and History

Races, venues and moments that shaped the sport. Some famous, some nearly forgotten.

Miami Marine Stadium

The world’s first stadium built specifically for powerboat racing opened in 1963 on Virginia Key. Closed since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, it still stands. The history and the fight to restore it.

Virgin Atlantic Challenger II

In 1986, Richard Branson brought the Blue Riband back to Britain for the first time in 34 years. The powerboat that crossed the Atlantic in under three days and how it was built.

Before Bluebird

The water speed record did not begin with Donald Campbell. The forgotten race for outright water speed from the 1890s onwards, and the men who set records before Bluebird existed.

Four Deaths in Four Months

In 1982, four circuit powerboat racers died in four months. What happened next changed the safety regulations of the sport permanently. The article that started Powerboat News’s history coverage.

Seebold at Bristol 1982

Tim Seebold arrived at the Bristol race in 1982 with a two-litre four-cylinder engine against competitors running V8s twice the size. He won. How he did it, and why it still matters.

Soviet Powerboat Racing

Behind the Iron Curtain in the 1960s, the Soviet Union ran a serious powerboat racing programme, issued commemorative stamps, and competed at international level. The history that Cold War coverage missed.

Rouen 1976

Fifty years before Poses, the 24-hour endurance race ran at Rouen with no sponsor, 24 boats and one Mercury outboard that ended a man’s night in the early hours. How the race was run.

British Hulls in Gibraltar

Some of Britain’s most celebrated offshore racing hulls from the 1970s ended up in Gibraltar, where they raced on long after the UK season had moved on. The boats that went south.