Shane, H1 drivers ready to rip up the Columbia

Back in the Tri-Cities for the first time since winning, then being disqualified from, then more than four months later being announced the winner of the 2016 HAPO Columbia Cup, Jimmy Shane was greeting local fans Thursday at the Kennewick HomeStreet Bank branch.

“We’re not really happy about how things transpired over that time period (after the 2016 Columbia Cup), but we could not be happier to be back in the Tri-Cities,” said Shane, the driver of the Miss Madison team’s U-1 Miss HomeStreet Bank. “The boat has been completely overhauled this off-season. (Crew chief) Dan Hoover and the crew ripped the decks off of it, and now she’s back in one piece and looks like a brand new boat.”

The four-time reigning H1 National High Point champion will drive his boat in a testing run Friday on the Columbia River; the maiden voyage for the newly-rebuilt Miss HomeStreet hull.

“There’s been a lot of bumps on it over the last three years, just from being aggressive, racing hard,” Shane said. “The boat’s in probably the best shape it’s been in the last eight years, and we’re really excited to see how that translates into more speed.”

Shane and the Miss Madison crew have looked pretty spectacular with the U-1 hull thus far.

Last year, Shane won his fourth consecutive High Points title despite a disqualification forcing him to finish seventh in the Unlimited championship heat of the Water Follies, and third overall in points for the weekend.

On the second lap of the heat, the U-1 collided with Jean Theoret’s U-16 Oh Boy! Oberto hull after the two had dueled closely for the first part of the race. Shane went on to win the heat on the water — and Theoret was passed by J. Michael Kelly in the U-5 Graham Trucking for second place — but was assessed a one-lap penalty by race officials for the collision, which caused him to place last and bumped Kelly up to the top spot.

The U-1 team filed an appeal in August, and H1 determined in December — three months after the season was over — that the penalty had been wrongfully assessed. Shane and the Miss Madison team were retroactively declared the Columbia Cup champs.

Winner of four of the past five Columbia Cups, Shane — who had his HomeStreet Bank sponsorship renewed in the off-season — and the Miss Madison team are setting their sights higher than ever this season.

“Our goal is to step up every year, and I think that’s why we’re a competitive team,” Shane said. “We always challenge ourselves every year, and usually it works out to where we meet all of our goals. That’s what leads us to the national championships.”

Fans can watch testing on the HAPO Columbia Cup course from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. In addition to Shane, Kelly, Andrew Tate in the U-9 Red Dot/Les Schwab, and Dustin Echols in the U-18 Bucket List Racing will be running, and the 1973 Pay n Pak vintage boat is scheduled to turn in some laps as well.

“First time in the water after the complete rebuild,” Shane said. “We have about five or six different set ups we want to test throughout the day tomorrow (Friday).

“This is a perfect time to experiment and see if we can pick up one or two miles per hour.”

The 2017 Columbia Cup will take place July 28-30.

This story was originally published June 1, 2017 at 7:34 PM with the headline "Shane, H1 drivers ready to rip up the Columbia."