It may take a crazy person to drive a drag boat, but it’s happening this weekend at the Ferguson on Fire Drag Boat Races.
At 10 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, drag boat racers will be strapping into the barest sliver of a boat with a big horsepower Mercury outboard on the back and eyes pointed 800 feet down the racetrack.
“You want to be crazy and go real fast, you want to be strapped in,” Shawn Jetton, owner of the Deep South Drag Boat Racing series said by phone on Thursday. “These guys are crazy. They are all crazy.”
Jetton is one of those crazy guys himself, but he doesn’t race quite as often as he once did. He spends his time working on engines and boats, several of which will be on the 800-foot drag strip on the lake this weekend.
This is the second year for the boats to come to Greenville and the organizers expect about 50 boats compared to the 30 or so from last year.
The boats are all powered by varying horsepower Mercury two-stroke outboards.
While two-stroke outboards are falling by the wayside in recreational use, they are still the backbone of the drag boat racing community as there hasn’t yet been development in racing technology for the four-stroke engines.
Jetton is working to develop a four-stroke race ready engine and also owns a boat manufacturer called Triad. Several Triad boats, along with Allison drag boats, will fill out the field on Saturday and Sunday.
The Allison boats are a single v-hull while the Triad is a V-hull with two sponsons creating a tri-hull look.
While most of the classes to be contested this weekend are highly regulated in terms of engine modifications and weight limits, there is one class that the only limit is the length of the boat at 16 feet. Jetton said it would be rare to see one of those boats appear at the race this weekend.
The races were once, like drag racing on asphalt, conducted over a ¼ mile course. The course was shortened to 800 feet on the water and the top classes in professional asphalt drag racing were shorted to 1,000 feet. Both were shortened for the same reason: safety.
“We were getting way too fast,” Jetton said. “Lots of boats were ending up upside down.”
While the classes are highly controlled, engine tuning is still the fastest route to a victory, Jetton said.
Camille Collins is once again helping to organize the event which is sponsored by Greenville Washington Convention & Visitors Bureau, City of Greenville, Community Foundation of Washington County, Trop Casino, Team Blast and Cast, Reliant Finishing Systems, Triple D Diesel, Mississippi Marine Corporation, MEC, Buckshot Marine, Bowlin Heating and Air, Jim’s Café and Belmont Plantation, Est. 1857
There will be food vendors on cityfront and the boats will be on display in the Trop Casino parking area by Schelben Park.
There will also be a raffle for an Outdoor Stealth Hunter Blind chair from Buckshot Marine. All proceeds from the event are to support the Greenville Police Department.
