Hydroplane Racing's...Flip Side

The silence follows first after an unlimited hydroplane blows over and shatters, deck-down against the water.

A long, chilling silence throughout the pit area lasts until someone spots the rescued driver.

But the periods of silence are getting shorter these days as upside-down hydros become more commonplace and drivers routinely walk away from violent-looking flips.

Meanwhile, the noise in the pits has grown from murmurs into clearly audible suspicions. Where's the common sense on the water? Don't drivers respect the risk of blowing over anymore?

"It's just a matter of time before somebody gets killed in one of these things because guys get so complacent," said Nate Brown, the most recent victim of a blowover.

Brown's flip last Sunday in the Tri-Cities was just the latest in a fast-growing string of blowovers - and the second this season for his Tide team. Brown replaced George Woods Jr. after Woods suffered ankle, rib and back injuries in a flip three weeks ago.

Brown wasn't even the first to flip last Sunday. Dave Villwock totaled the Miss Circus Circus in a flip during the first heat. It was the first time in five years two boats blew over at the same event, but already it was the third event this season with a flip.

When Ken Dryden blew over Friday on Lake Washington, that made four events this season, three in a row, and six of the past 11 dating to last year in Seattle.

The commissioner of the Unlimited Racing Commission, Don Jones, says he is "always concerned about blowovers," but he doesn't seem especially bothered by the latest rash of flips.

"The drivers seem to be coming out in great shape," he said, praising the protective enclosed cockpit developed over the past decade. "Now we can do what motor cars do - crash and burn and go over 50 feet in the air, and the guy can get out and brush himself off."

That's the kind of thinking some drivers are afraid is going on in cockpits. The kind of thinking that makes a driver feel he can't be seriously hurt in a racing accident.

"I certainly don't feel that way. I feel very vulnerable out there," said Chip Hanauer, the Miss Budweiser driver who suffered a concussion and broken ribs in a blowover in Seattle last year.

But Hanauer, who has flipped four times in unlimited boats, said he fears he may be one of the few drivers with such an attitude. His 17-year unlimited career far exceeds the experience of any other current regular driver, none of whom has driven a turbine-powered unlimited boat without an enclosed cockpit.

"This is a dangerous sport, no question about that," Hanauer, 39, said. "We can't get cavalier attitudes about these canopies."

Since Dean Chenoweth's death in a blowover accident in 1982, no unlimited drivers have been killed in the sport. And since Steve Reynolds suffered serious head injuries in a blowover in 1987, no one has suffered lasting injuries.

Nobody argues that the reason is the enclosed cockpit developed by Jim Lucero, Jeff Neff and others, along with seat belts, spring-mounted seats and oxygen supplies for drivers who become submerged. The enclosed cockpits became mandatory on all boats in 1989.

But lately a disturbing paradox has been raised like a sponson on a gust. What if the sport is becoming more dangerous because it has been made so much less dangerous?

"I think now, with the sport being so much safer with the enclosed cockpit, everybody takes more risk than they would in an open cockpit," said Mike Hanson, driver of the Kellogg's boat.

The healthy fear that used to be each driver's most reliable safety feature has disappeared into a deep faith in technology.

Andy Coker, a URC official and an unlimited driver since 1985, remembers the fear of his first ride in an open-cockpit unlimited hydroplane.

"I knew it was going to throw me in the first turn. I knew it would," he said. "I went through a pair of $50 gloves in one race because I was holding on so tight."

Just three years after Coker's first run, Ron Snyder and John Prevost flipped simultaneously in a race, and both walked away without injury. Snyder felt so good, he set up a souvenir stand near his team's pit spot the same day, selling autographed pieces of his broken boat for $5 each.

Both drove boats equipped with enclosed cockpits.

"Technology cannot protect the driver in every situation," Hanauer said. "These boats are going fast. It's not inconceivable someday we're going to experience another death."

That's one reason the Miss Budweiser crew is testing a small wing mounted atop the boat's right sponson. It's designed to funnel air over the top of the side most likely to get loose.

Still, speeds are improving faster than safety technology. Course qualifying records have been set at every race since the middle of the 1991 season. Mark Tate in the Winston Eagle even reached the magic 170-mph mark for one-lap average speed.

"The boats are so fast now, the technology is not up to the speed," Brown said.

Hanson feels some teams are pushing their search for speed even closer to the edge on race day.

"The problems some of these boats are having, they're loosening up the boats to get the faster speed in qualifying," he said, "and I think they're leaving it alone on race day."

So an edgy boat set up for maximum speed for three laps on a calm, empty race course gets sent out in a six-boat, five-lap race full of roostertails and competition chop.

Brown: "It's a matter of time. . . ."

Coker drove a turbine-powered boat for the first time last weekend, borrowing Hanson's Kellogg's boat during qualifying at Tri-Cities.

"I did not feel invincible in it," he said. "But I didn't feel vulnerable.

"Nate's probably right, but the odds of getting hurt are down. It's going to be something weird (that seriously hurts or kills a driver). We've done as much to make those things as safe as possible. We've gone as far as technology can go."

Example: Woods' accident three weeks ago. He likely wouldn't have been hurt nearly so badly, if at all, had his boat landed upside down. Instead, the boat flipped 360 degrees and landed right-side up, jolting his body, "like sitting in a chair, falling out a three-story window and landing on the chair," Woods said.

Without radical changes in body design, it seems unlikely anything more could have been done to make Woods safer in such a wreck. On the other hand, the cockpit was secure enough that Woods, 43, not only survived but is expected to make a full recovery and return to racing.

"The enclosed cockpits keep us in one piece and give us a little more confidence," said Hanson, who flipped in the Kellogg's in 1988 and 1991.

Said Ron Jones Sr., one of the developers of the driver canopy: "I used to push a boat out and get a sick feeling wondering if the fellow was going to come back. Now I have a great deal of confidence."

If Jones, who has been in the sport several decades, has confidence in the new equipment, imagine the confidence of the new generation of drivers who weren't there when blowovers killed Bill Muncey in Acapulco in 1981 and Chenoweth in the Tri-Cities in 1982, and put Reynolds in a coma in 1987.

"I have no fear," Tate said. "To run the boat hard I think you've got to run on the ragged edge. I've been fortunate the boat hasn't gone over at any time. . . . To put a boat in that position, I think, is driver error."

Driver error, or overconfidence?

"I don't think there's too many of us out there overconfident," Woods said. "Otherwise, we'd be out there left and right crashing into things. You have to have confidence to compete."

You have to have something else, too, to do it right, he said. "It's not overconfidence, and it's not fear. What it's called is respect. You have to respect your fellow drivers and respect your equipment - respect the speeds that you're going.

"You just have to have general respect for life."