'Qui­et­ly Con­fi­dent'… This is the bold ex­pres­sion from both 2019 - 95mph class win­ner, and first to To­ba­go, En­er­giza and echoed by the icon­ic Mr So­lo Too chas­ing that elu­sive 19th ti­tle, ahead of the 52nd run­ning of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Great Race - the longest con­sec­u­tive­ly run off­shore power­boat race in the world. The 2020 ed­i­tyion runs off on Sat­ur­day.

A to­tal of 26 ma­chines have signed up to take part in this Trinidad and To­ba­go Power­boat As­so­ci­a­tion's (TTP­BA) mar­quee event, one that was in jeop­ardy of be­ing fur­ther post­poned or can­celled up to a fort­night ago. The sec­ond roll­back due to coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, has im­pact­ed the lo­cal sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ties sim­i­lar to what is tak­ing place around the world, but as the TTP­BA Pres­i­dent Mar­cus Gomez point­ed out, this is a no-con­tact sport, where the 12th man doesn't re­al­ly fac­tor in this high-speed pur­suit. Gomez al­so said that he was proud that teams were still will­ing to come out to race de­spite any chal­lenges they may be fac­ing dur­ing this pan­dem­ic and eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, and as­sured the na­tion that all pub­lic health pro­to­cols will be ad­hered to and fol­lowed to the T. There will be no spec­ta­tors al­lowed at any of the usu­al view­ing points, and rac­ing teams will not dock in To­ba­go, but re­turn to Trinidad af­ter a rest pe­ri­od.

This event that runs from out­side the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel on Wright­son Road in Port-of-Spain to Store Bay will be streamed live from 6: 30 am on CNC3's Face­book page and web­site for the sec­ond year run­ning on Sat­ur­day, a feat that was no small ac­com­plish­ment for the TTP­BA ac­cord­ing to their Pres­i­dent, as the race runs along the very re­mote coast­line for the ma­jor­i­ty of the race. Gomez how­ev­er, high­light­ed that many im­prove­ments were made by part­ner­ing with oth­er com­pa­nies, and con­tin­gen­cies are in place for the un­known as they aim to make it a great view­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for a great race.

From the reg­is­tered boats, five are reg­is­tered from To­ba­go with no in­ter­na­tion­al en­trants this year. How­ev­er, as they say in lo­cal palance, “any num­ber could play” with news that great race stal­wart, and Mr So­lo Too throt­tle-man for over two decades, Darin Mar­shall will not com­pete along­side na­tion­al icon and dri­ver Ken Charles this year, as he is un­able to trav­el from Cana­da, and for­mer vice pres­i­dent Roger Bell will now em­brace the cov­et­ed seat. This is the sec­ond ma­jor change in as many years for the 130 mph class out­fit with Devin­dra Joseph re­plac­ing Irish­man Gi­no Fus­co in the nav­i­ga­tor's chair in 2019, as Fus­co is un­well.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports, Darin Mar­shall said, “It's tough not be­ing there, but I've been in con­stant con­tact with Ken (Charles) dur­ing this process and we are con­fi­dent that we have a very ca­pa­ble body in Roger Bell who is now in the 'stick­man's seat.” I have had many con­ver­sa­tions with Roger and know that we are go­ing to bring it, I even shared our close­ly guard­ed se­crets with him“. When probed about some of those rit­u­als, point­ers and tips, Darin just smiled and just said that they will re­main con­fi­den­tial, and that every throt­tle-man will have his own in­stinc­tive tac­tics, but they re­main qui­et­ly con­fi­dent that they will get across safe­ly first and fore­most and in the first po­si­tion. Darin said he will al­so be up and watch­ing on as he would on race day, there in spir­it.

Well, the man that all eyes will be on, Roger Bell rec­ol­lects that mo­ment in mo­tor­sport his­to­ry, “I'll al­ways re­mem­ber that phone call on a Fri­day af­ter­noon in June when Ken Charles called me and asked what my plans were for the great race, when I told him we were sit­ting it out, he asked me if I would throt­tle for him. Well, af­ter a long pause, I said I would be ab­solute­ly ho­n­oured to.” Bell said that he feels by this ho­n­our alone he has al­ready won the great race and hopes to do Darin proud.

It will cer­tain­ly be a clash of the Ti­tans, but not com­ing from the same class. En­er­giza is de­ter­mined to do the dou­ble and take fur­ther brag­ging rights, as they al­so re­main qui­et­ly con­fi­dent of vic­to­ry. Dri­ver for the 95mph class front run­ner, Shel­don Edghill spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports about how they plan to de­fend. Edghill said, “Same as last year, we get to the front, we run the boat as hard as we could, we push, we look at the con­di­tions, and see how much hard­er we can push the boat, safe­ly of course. But our plan is to run, we are not go­ing to hold back for any­body, our plan is once we start we go­ing… Mr So­lo and Big Thun­der have to play Catch up.”

Ed­i­tor's note:

Great Race 2020 stream­ing live on CNC3's Face­book page and web­site from 6:30 am on Sat­ur­day, with com­men­tary by CNC3's Robert Du­mas and Richard Blaize.