06/09/2025
Storms, high wind take out H1 season opener at Guntersville
BY DAVID CAMPBELL, Madison Courier
GUNTERSVILLE, Ala. — Miss Madison’s season opener ended after just half a lap due to a blown engine but as it turned out, the team didn’t miss anything on Guntersville Lake.
Storms and high wind conspired to knock out the H1 Unlimited season opener in Guntersville without an official lap of competition being run, a disappointing start to the 2025 season.
Miss Madison Racing, which is essentially starting over this season with a new driver, new boat and new crew, chased gremlins all weekend and when they finally got on the water Saturday morning, the boat damaged an engine on its first test lap. The team spent the rest of the weekend watching the wind-blown surface of a rough Lake Guntersville.
But so did everybody else. Heat 1 on Saturday was stopped on the first lap when Dave Villwock blew over in the U-27 Miss Apollo and early afternoon storms washed out the rest of the day.
Sunday morning was a beautiful day with sunny skies and temperatures in the high 70s, but wind gusts of up to 25 mph made the big lake to dangerous to race. Other than the rough water tolerant offshore series, which ran two heats, the only other action on the water came in the form of waterfowl.
“We held out all day. We tried and tried. We got weather reports all day that the wind was supposed to come down, but unfortunately, Mother Nature was not in our favor,” H1 Unlimited Chief Referee Jonathan Abbott said. “Unfortunately, we had to make the tough decision that the water conditions were just unsafe for these drivers. We’ve got to put safety first.”
The Miss Madison team had hoped to use the weekend to work out the kinks in its rented hull, the former Miss Budweiser T-3 hull, and to get rookie driver Brandon Kennedy laps on the water in order to be officially qualified for H1.
Neither of those things happened. Battery and igniter issues on Friday kept the boat off the water all through testing and qualifying. Late Friday night, the team seemed to get those issues resolved, but in less than half a lap on the water in testing Saturday morning, the boat’s Lycoming turbine engine exploded, ending the team’s weekend.
Despite numerous setbacks, Kennedy was optimistic.
“I saw resiliency in our team. They never gave up,” Kennedy said. “We had issues right off the bat. On Friday, some electrical gremlins had kind of reared their head and the team just kept going. They all communicated well, things were going smooth. Finally got that motor fired up late Friday night, and we were pretty set for Saturday, got on the water and obviously had our engine problems there. But still, we never gave up.”
Miss Madison Team President Kyle Bipes said that while the team did not accomplish any of its goals for the weekend, the trip was still beneficial.
“We learned some things this weekend that we didn’t want to learn yet, and unfortunately, we learned them. The main goal down here was get ready for Madison, get Brandon qualified, get the boat ready so we can go run at Madison. Unfortunately, we didn’t accomplish any of that,” Bipes said. “But we did learn some things. The crew works pretty well together. We have some different things to work on, but overall, it’s been fun. The crew was disappointed, of course, but not upset, which is good, and they’re ready to get the boat back to Madison and get back to work.”
As for the competition itself, there were a few highlights in the brief amount of time on the water. Former Miss Madison driver Andrew Tate, driving the former Miss Madison hull, the U-91 Goodman Real Estate, came close to setting a new qualifying record on Friday, posting an average lap speed of 171.040 mph, just two hundredths of a second off the record.
Corey Peabody was second on the qualifying ladder at 169.036 aboard the U-9 Beacon Plumbing, J. Michael Kelly was third at 163.200 in the U-8 Beacon Electric, Dave Villwock was fourth at 161.527 in the U-27 Miss Apollo, and Jamie Nilsen was fifth at 159.371 in the U-11 Flav-R-Pac.
Heat 1 was shaping up to be an exciting race. As the field entered the second turn of the first lap, all four boats were side by side. Villwock, in lane one, got loose and slid out to his right, catching Tate’s rooster tail and lifting off. His Miss Apollo then went through Nilsen’s roostertail and higher into the air, landing just in front of Peabody before corkscrewing to a stop. Peabody went just to the left of the Apollo, driving through his wash and ripping off his front canard wing.
The Miss Apollo landed upright and Villwock exited the craft quickly. He was checked by medical personnel in the pits and released.
“It just looked like Dave hit some side rollers and it popped him up and he came unhooked. When that happens, there’s nothing you can do,” Peabody said. “Unfortunately, when he came down, the back end of his boat hit the water and the spray hit me and ripped the whole front of our boat off. It’s unfortunate, but that’s racing.”
With the recovery delay and due to the approaching storms, the heat was never re-run.
The H1 fleet now heads to Madison for the River City Printing Madison Regatta July 4-6 on the Ohio River.
