Alex Radovanovic's father was great Formula 1 car driver. Here's the boat, with Alex waiting for me in the left seat. A really tight squeeze side-by-side in the cockpit. I get a huge helmet that attaches to a restraining network that protects the head and neck under high G forces, and a fighter-pilot type harness.

An Incredible F1 Ride

I got the ride of my life in a one-off 2-seater F1 boat they built for promotion. These are truly amazing boats! They look more like aircraft than watercraft, and in fact are surface-effect flyers down the straightaways until they reach down and grab the water to make a turn. I've built a couple of inboard power boats so I have a clue at least. Alex Radovanovic, who has been an F1 boat competition driver, opened up the 350 HP Merc F1 V6 and took me into a few turns at over 100 MPH, coming out over 90 degrees to the left at over 70 MPH, with 2 seconds of 4 or 5 G sideforce: WAY more than the max of an F1 racing car. Just unbelievable ... I got slammed against the right wall of the cockpit and heard the loud roar of us carving into the water. Good thing the helmet had a restraining system!

Alex is a very talented driver. After my repeated thumbs-up after two hard corners, he decided I was serious, and ran one lap in race mode, never getting off the throttle. It was just amazing. Those pylons fly towards you on the straightaway, and a really fast reaction time is needed to cut a corner just around them. Of course the water was flat and there were no other boats, but I got a least a taste of what it's like to run in a F1 boat.

Look at the top of this page to see this boat taking a over-90-degree turn starting at 100+ MPH, and coming out of the turn at about 70 MPH! This was from another run (no one was taking photos of me!)

We head out onto the racecourse. Formula 1 Powerboats accelerate faster than even the most state-of-the-art F1 cars; they are capable of going from standstill to 160 kilometers per hour in only 4 seconds. We didn't do that from the dock, like the real race Le Mans start, but Alex did do a full throttle 40 to 100MPH that really put me back in the seat. We come back to the dock, where Chinese pit volunteers grab our boat with their noose.