Remund's Hydroplane Wins At Record Speed in Miami

May 20, 1973, MIAMI (AP) —Mickey Remund established stadium record of 111.150 miles an hour in his Pay ‘n Pak unlimited hydroplane today on the way to capturing the $25,000 Champion Spark Plug Regatta.

Dean Chenoweth in Miss Budweiser holds the inside lane on Mickey Remund
in Pay 'n Pak as the pair go around the first turn at Miami's Marine Stadium.

George Henley, driving the Lincoln Thrift and Loan, was second and Jim McCormick finished third in his Red Man. The defending regatta and national champion,. Bill Muncey, was forced out of the race with engine trouble and minor injuries. He was treated for facial burns after being covered with hot oil from his engine.

Remund broke the previous record for the 2½-mile course twice. In the first heat he clocked a speed of 106.867 m.p.h., which also broke the mark of 105.448 m.p.h. set last year by Muncey.

Chenoweth, Bud win first Tri-Cities Gold Cup

Takes advantage when Pay ’n Pak breaks down with lead in the final.

Reprinted from Tri-City Herald, July19, 2015

July 22, 1973: The first Gold Cup race on the Columbia.

Dean Chenoweth picked up his second career Gold Cup victory, driving the Miss Budweiser to some record times.

The Bud set marks for a 15-mile heat race (111.386 mph) and for a 60-mile average (105.354 mph) as the Gold Cup was held on the Columbia River for the first time.

But it had to be the Pride of Pay ’n Pak and driver Mickey Remund as the oddsmaker’s favorite going into the final heat.

Remund had driven the Pak to first-place finishes in all three of his heats, giving the team a field-best 1,200 points entering the final.

Chenoweth and Bud, meanwhile, along with Bill Muncey and the Atlas Van Lines, each had 1,100 points after three heats, winning twice and placing second once.

In the final, Remund had the lead early and was dominating before the propeller broke on the Pak.

That left the battle for first between Chenoweth and Muncey, who were dueling hard for the lead.

But Chenoweth had the lead the entire way on Muncey, although the latter was always within a roostertail.

“I knew that if we pushed hard, somebody would have to break,” Chenoweth told the Herald after the race. “So I stuffed my foot into it and went as fast as I could.”

It was heartbreak for the Pak team, which lost the national high-points lead and headed to Seattle trailing the Bud by 100 points.

“I don’t know what happened,” Remund said after the race. “Everything from the gear box to the prop is destroyed. The damage is almost the same as we had in Detroit.”

Part of the prop flew off and gouged a hole in his boat.

Things would get better for Remund and the Pak, as the team eventually regained the national high-points lead and won the season championship.

Henley qualifies with Pay 'n Pak

June 29, 1974, DETROIT (AP) — George Henley's Pride of Pay 'n Pak and Bill Muncey's Atlas Van Lines U-71 head Sunday's field in the Spirit of Detroit unlimited hydroplane race for the Gar Wood trophy.

Muncey's U-71 ended up on the bottom of the Detroit River when he was here in May, but six weeks of rebuilding helped him turn in the second-best qualifying time over a shortened course.

Muncey pushed the U-71 to an "official" speed of 132.352 m.p.h. over the 2½-mile course Friday. However, officials are computing speeds based on the normal three-mile run for unlimited hydroplane races.

The course over the often treacherous river was shortened Thursday in the interest of safety. The major changes was the removal of the sharp "roostertail" turn.

Henley piloted the Pay 'n Pak to a 133.044 m.ph. qualifying run Thursday to notch the fastest qualifying speed.

Others making the cut in the final qualifying heats Friday were Milner Irvin in Miss Madison, Fred Alter in Atlas U-44, Roger D'Eath in Miss Cott Beverage, Tom Martin in Sunny Jim and Tom Kaufman in Mr. Fabricator.

Although the speeds turned in during qualifying and the race will not have any historic basis because of the shortened course, Muncey was all smiles.

"It was the first time we had it in the water since I crashed it and it was just beautiful. And we had plenty left," he said.

The Atlas U-71 and Pay 'n Pak will be joined in the "fast" heat of Sunday's race by Miss U.S., Miss Budweiser and Miss Madison.

The first heat will feature Savair's Probe, Atlas U-44, Sunny Jim, Miss Cott Beverage and Mr. Fabricator.

CU-22, piloted by Bob Schroeder, is an alternate in case one of the top 10 qualifiers is unable to run.

Muncey, No Longer No. 1, Will Try Harder

By Parton Keese
Reprinted by The New York Times, June 3, 1973

The question this year in unlimited hydroplanes is: Can Bill Muncey come back? Last year the question was: Can Bill Muncey be stopped? He wasn't much last year — winning every race except one in the Atlas Van Lines boat, but this year Muncey was beaten in the opening race at Miami after an extra curricular effort in an outboard had resulted in several broken ribs.

With at least eight of the 200-mile-an-hour thunderboats convening on the Potomac River in Washington this weekend for the President's Cup regatta, the new hero, so far, is Mickey Remund. He won the Champion Spark Plug regatta in Miami and set a course record doing so, 119.363 miles an hour for one lap and 119.048 for a five-lap average.

Remund has the helm of Pride of Pay 'n Pak, the new Ron Jones‐design. Also in the race are the two hydros that gave Remund his toughest competition before succumbing to engine trouble: Miss Budweiser (last year's Pride of Pay 'n Pak) and Lincoln Thrift, now with a new driver, Gene Whipp of Dayton, Ohio.

Others running are Gale's Roostertail, Red Man, Notre Dame (new driver, Ronnie Larson), Miss Madison and Atlas, with Muncey reportedly recovered from his wounds. Not entered are Miss U.S. and Valu-Mart.

For a new boat on the seven-race circuit, victory in the first regatta is a surprise, while a record is shocking. There were even a few snickers in the pits when the Pay 'n Pak crew announced that the low-profile pickle hull had been clocked unofficially at 119 miles an hour-plus on her first practice run.

“Don't you think that's exaggerating just a little bit?” replied one of the other drivers. This is a pretty tight course. Are you trying to tell me Remund broke Muncey's record by an honest 6 miles an hour?”

Mickey answered his critics later, of course, when he made the record official. Although Muncey drove despite his aching body, Pay 'n Pak's most serious challenger turned out to be Dean Chenoweth, the former national champion, in Budweiser.

In the second heat at Miami, Remund and Chenoweth tangled in a thrilling three-lap duel, which ended when the Bud's engine blew in a sheet of flames on the back stretch.

In the Atlas Van lines camp, there were signs that all was not well beside Muncey. The new fuel-injection system developed by Jim Kerth and Lee Schoenith, the owner, was one source of problems.

“With the cold weather we've been having up in Detroit,” Schoenith said, “we have not had a chance to do enough testing. I would say that we're 90-percent home free, and I'm sure we'll have it worked out as the season goes on.”

Another new boat that has caught spectators' attention is Lincoln Thrift, a turbocharged cabover design. Although it had its problems trying not to spin out on the tight Miami Stadium turns, it is tremendously fast. If Lincoln can straighten out and Budweiser's engine holds up and Pay 'N Pak continues hot and Muncey gets back in the winning groove, the Potomac could be boiling before the day is over.

Master hydroplane builder Ron Jones Sr. dead at 84

He reportedly built more than 500 boats, championed the enclosed canopy on unlimiteds and moved drivers to the front in a radical redesign.

By Bob Condotta
Reprinted from The Seattle Times, January 31, 2017

Ron Jones Sr. once estimated he built more than 500 boats in many different classes of racing.

But it was the more than two dozen unlimited hydroplanes he constructed — some that helped usher in the age of the enclosed cockpits and forward-seating boats that remain the dominant design today — that Jones might have been best remembered for when he passed away on Jan. 19 of natural causes at the age of 84.

Ron Jones in 2006.

Legendary driver Dave Villwock, though, said it would be impossible to point to just one boat or design as his greatest legacy.

“There was a little bit of him in all of them,’’ said Villwock, the winningest driver in unlimited history, of Jones’ impact on hydroplane boat design.

Jones, a 1950 graduate of Highline High School in Burien, was the son of Ted Jones, the legendary driver and race-boat designer whose win in the 1950 Gold Cup helped bring unlimited hydro racing to Seattle.

When Ted Jones piloted the Slo-mo-shun IV to a win in the Gold Cup in Detroit that year, Seattle got the right to host the Gold Cup in 1951. There has been a hydro race in Seattle every year since, with the course now named in Ted Jones’ honor.

While Ron Jones once said he drove every boat he built at least once, he preferred to build and not drive.

One of his first significant hulls was the 1958 Miss Bardahl that topped the hydroplane national points standings. Maybe his most famous was the Pay ’n Pak, nicknamed the Winged Wonder, which dominated the sport from 1973-76.

Longtime driver Chip Hanauer said he marveled at the artistry in the boats that Jones designed.

“He was a master,’’ Hanauer said. “As a driver, I was the violinist. But he was Stradivarius. A violinist, when they play a Stradivarius, they know that they are not just playing an amazing instrument but a work of art.’’

Hanauer and Villwock, though, said Jones also cared deeply about safety, which ultimately might be his greatest contribution to the sport.

He was among the first to champion the idea that cockpits should be in front of the engine instead of behind it, which he thought would make the boats more aerodynamically sound.

Jones introduced a Miss Bardahl boat with that design to much fanfare in 1966. The boat, though, was involved in an accident on the sport’s worst day at the President’s Cup in Washington, D.C., when it lost a propeller and took flight and then nose-dived into the water, killing driver Ron Musson. Two other drivers would also be killed that day.

Jones once told The Seattle Times he lost 50 pounds in the three months after the accident, and it was said he didn’t build another unlimited for four years.

“He cared so much about the people and the drivers that were in his boats,’’ Hanauer said. “I think that was very difficult for him. He did everything he could with the technology available to try to improve driver safety.’’

By the ’80s, the forward-seating hull had become the primary design, with Jones at the forefront of another innovation that greatly improved safety in the sport — enclosed cockpits.

“Ron was a guy that really pushed to the fully-enclosed canopy,’’ said Villwock, who worked with Jones designing boats for a time in the late 1980s.

Jones installed an F-16 canopy on the Miss Budweiser and the Miss 7-Eleven in the mid-’80s in the wake of the death of Miss Budweiser driver Dean Chenoweth in an accident in the Tri-Cities in 1982, and within a few years the safety capsules were mandatory.

Only one unlimited hydroplane driver has been killed since then.

“If I haven’t done anything else, getting canopies on boats that would allow drivers to survive has been something of a great accomplishment,” Jones, whose son Ron Jones Jr. would also become a famed boat designer, told The Seattle Times in 1999.

“He was a brilliant guy that had some good ideas and was willing to open his mind to what others had to say, as well,’’ said Villwock of Jones, who was inducted into the hydroplane racing Hall of Fame in 2004. “And the result was something revolutionary.’’

Muncey Takes Off With Seafair Cup

August 7, 1972, Seattle, Wash. (UPI) - If baseball parlance can be applied to unlimited hydroplane racing, veteran driver Bill Muncey did more than have a perfect game, he nearly had a perfect season.

When Muncey ran away from the field in the Atlas Van Lines for an amazingly easy victory in the Seattle Seafair Trophy race Sunday, he chalked up the following statistics at the end of the unlimited season:

• Six wins in seven races.
• National championships for driver and boat.
• Winner of 22 of 25 heats for the season.
• Finisher in every heat he started.
• Trailed in his one losing race by one 3 seconds at at finish. 

With more than 100,000 fans lining the lake shore in a record 91-degree heat wave, Sunday’s Seafair Race was billed as a season-ending showdown between the Atlas Van Lines and the Pride of Pay ’n Pak, which had been chasing the Atlas across the finish line all year.

That bit of anticipated excitement never materialized. The Pay ’n Pak, with Bill Sterett, Jr, at the wheel, blew engines at the start of two preliminary heats and never reached the final or even got racing.

Muncey, of San Diego, wrapped up national championships for himself and the Detroit-based Atlas Van Lines in his very first heat with a coasting second-place finish. He won his next preliminary heat and roared away from the field in the final competition for the easy victory.

Pay 'n Pak 'salts' away second place in Miami

Reprinted from Pay 'n Pak Racing Team News, July 28, 1981

"For today, second place is not all that bad," said Dave Heerensperger, owner of the turbine-powered Pay 'n Pak unlimited hydroplane after driver John Walters guided the boat to a second place in the first race of the season at Miami, FL, in the eleventh annual running of the Champion Spark Plug Regatta.

Walters, running in his first unlimited race ever, and driving the Pak in its maiden race, picked up a win in the first heat of competition, and then with a little luck in the final finished second to the powerful Miss Budweiser when Bill Muncey in the Atlas Van Lines went dead in the water after the first lap.

Emotions at Miami ran the gamut from deep frustration when the team had
problems getting motors running to jubilation when the Pak took a second
place finish in the final. Photo by Bill Moore.

Beset by a number of problems from the opening day of testing and qualifying, Walters gave a great deal of credit to the crew, noting, "We had a lot of problems and the crew did a hell of a job. They could have quit a number of times but they just kept plugging away. Without their dedication I don't think we would have made it out of the pits."

Trouble for the Pak stemmed from salt water, high temperatures, and humidity resulting in numerous motor failures during testing and qualifying. Salt water was the major problem, as the salt in the water crystallized on the blades of the compressor causing what is known a a compressor stall in the world of turbine engines.

After a day of thrashing on the boat Friday, the team got the boat running well enough to get the "whoosh" machine to qualify at just of 95 mph. later in the day Walters upped that to just over 105 mph; and on Sunday prior to the race, upped that speed to just under 107 mph.

And just for the sake of definition, a thrash, in this instance, means that Walters, the crew, and crew chief Jim Lucero, had the boat in the water 17 times for test runs prior to the running of the first head of racing on Sunday.

Changes that were made for racing in the salt water of Miami included sealing the ram scoops in the front of the boat and running the boat without the cowling.

The Pak did get the luck of the draw, which saw the Budweiser and Atlas Van Lines matched in both preliminary heats. Walters won his first heat, but failed to start in the second due to an engine that the salt had overcome.

In that first heat, Walters started on the outside and went into the first furn with Miss Madison and Michael's Pride and faltered momentarily when he ran into another compressor stall. This time the motor stayed lit, however, and Walters reeled in both Miss Madison and Michael's Pride much to the favor of the 16,000 fans on hand for the event.

In the final head, Walters found himself on the inside, in a place where he didn't want to be, and he backed off going into the first turn to make sure that he didn't get "washed down" - something that would have been fatal for the Pak since it was running without its cowling.

Meanwhile, Bill Muncey in his Atlas Van Lines and Dean Chenoweth in the Bud were battling for the lead with Muncey holding the upper hand until the two exited turn four and Muncey's engine gave way leaving the lead to the Bud. Walters passed the Madison going up the back stretch earning second place when Muncey went dead in the water.

"The Budweiser was obviously the boat to beat in the final so our strategy was to take the safe lane into the first turn with a good start and make the motor live," said Walters.

Both Heerensperger and Lucero had praise for Walter's driving performance, as he not only kept the boat out of trouble on the race course but showed plenty of skill in guiding the turbine-powered hull to first and second place finishes.

Heerensperger also gave credit to Lucero and his Pak crew for their notable performance at the Miami race. "Our crew really busted their tails to get the boat in the race, and I just can't say too much about their performance, "Heerensperger said.