Powerboat Miss GEICO goes for another win in Sarasota

As the day grew long outside the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall and a sprinkling of raindrops started to pelt the dwindling crowd at the Sarasota Powerboat Grand Prix, fans still paused and posed with a lime green and blue powerboat that finds its way to the front of the pack nearly every year in Sarasota.

Every once in a while someone will stop to tell Marc Granet, the driver, or Scotty Begovich, the throttleman, what a staple this boat is to their Fourth of July weekend. For 10 years, Begovich said people will tell him, they’ve been stopping for just a few minutes to pause for a photo with the Miss GEICO unlimited class boat, the flagship vehicle of the most recognizable team in offshore powerboat racing.

“Kids are driving cars that took their first picture with me when they were 5,” Begovich said.

Begovich and the Miss GEICO team have been coming to the Sarasota Grand Prix every year since the team was founded in 2005. In more than a decade since, Miss GEICO has become the most successful team in offshore powerboat racing, winning eight world championships on three different circuits. Miss GEICO enters the Grand Prix every year on a short list of favorites, and this year the Riviera Beach team races off the coast of Lido Key as the defending champion.

The unlimited boat is one of three for Miss GEICO this year. The team also runs a P1 SuperStock boat, which ran three races on the opening day of the Grand Prix on Saturday, and sponsors a P1 AquaX personal watercraft driven by Bradenton’s Jason Russo.

But the unlimited class boat, which will race Sunday at 1:30 p.m. in the Gulf of Mexico, is the signature craft, the one the team has positioned as a modern-day Miss Budweiser.

“This is our No. 1. Everything else is just bonus,” Begovich said. “We can help out other classes of racing.”

Begovich and the Miss GEICO team are open about the Budweiser boat’s influence. The GEICO boat’s name is partially a tribute to the team that spent most of its 43 years as the most famous in offshore powerboat racing.

The Miss Budweiser boat wasn’t known just to hardcore fans of boat racing or even people who would pay attention maybe once a year when the races would come near their home. Kids who never saw the boat race could play with toy models. The team’s sponsor made them relevant to most of the country, which might have seen the signature Hydroplane in a commercial or at a boat show.

“For 30 years, they were the boat in boat racing, and we tried to emulate their success and the way they built their team and their brand,” Begovich said. “That’s the Miss GEICO.”

Winning, of course, has helped. After a few years of learning how to pilot this boat, Begovich and Granet clicked during one weekend in Michigan. They had spent years trying to clear the hurdle of beating Bud Select, and once they finally did the wins began to pile up.

Miss GEICO’s first world championship came in 2006 when they swept the Offshore Powerboat Association/Pacific Offshore Powerboat Racing Association and Offshore Super Series (OSS) titles in the extreme classification. They repeated as the OSS champion a year later and have won two more titles in the Offshore Powerboat Association, plus three more titles in Super Boat International.

With the team’s success, Miss GEICO has built up the brand recognition rare in offshore powerboat. On Sunday, they’ll try to add yet another win to their already remarkable resume.

“We wanted the coolest looking boat with the coolest colors,” Begovich said. “We wanted it to be seen on the highways and the byways and the boat shows, so even if you don’t know boat racing, you know Miss GEICO.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2017 at 7:41 PM with the headline "Powerboat Miss GEICO goes for another win in Sarasota."