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| 1980 Pay 'N Pak |
This is the original Pay 'N Pak turbine unlimited hydroplane. It blew over during qualifying in Tri-Cities, Washington and was done for the year.
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| 1981 Pay 'N Pak |
During the winter, Jim Lucero redesign the front of the boat to have adjustable canards to help hold the boat down. The team ran the front wings at some times, but mostly the boat ran without them.
To add a bit more to the story, the canard arrangement was found to be more of a problem than running without it. What was discovered was that due to the short distance between the rear of the canard and the bull nose, it actually increased the generated lift at the front of the boat.
As explained by driver John Walter, "We tried this in an effort to give a little more control of the boat ride. As you can see, they are very close to the leading edge of the hull. So close in fact they acted more like a fence or air dam. They disturbed the air flow to the point it was more difficult to control and in some cases had the opposite effect. We removed them and found that just removing that much surface area made the boat better than using the wings."
The following year, Jim Lucero built the new Atlas Van Lines using a larger spacing between the rear of the fixed canard and bull nose. It was not only found to work, it set the pattern used on almost all new boats until the mid 90's.
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| 1982 Pay 'N Pak |
After running on saltwater race courses they found that the front intakes caused problems with water ingestion. So during the winter they redesigned the front cowling intakes and added a top intake with head rest.
The same hull ran all three years. A second hull was built in the 1982 and was planned to be run in 1983. However, in 1982 at Seattle, the original hull suffered a devastating accident. The accident severely injured driver John Walters and owner Dave Heerensperger suffered a heart attack due to the accident. After that, the team went up for sale and was bought mid season 1983 by Steve Woomer. In 1984 the new hull was run as the Tosti Asti.