Mo­bil Out­law shook off a fu­el-tank scare on Fri­day night to sur­prise the field at yes­ter­day's 52nd run­ning of the T&T Great Race by not on­ly be­ing the first boat to reach the sis­ter-isle of To­ba­go, but by win­ning the ti­tle in the 80MPH Class.

The win capped off a sur­pris­ing twist dur­ing the week which saw the boat be­ing plagued with prob­lems af­ter prob­lems, fi­nal­ly set­tle down to give the two-man crew vic­to­ry ac­cord­ing to throt­tle­man Ja­son Ross, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia Sports af­ter the race.

He said, the win in an un­of­fi­cial time of one hour, 14 min­utes and 52 sec­onds, now makes it their fourth time win­ning in their cat­e­go­ry, a con­vinc­ing achieve­ment for a boat that was re­built in 2019. They have al­so set a new record time in the cat­e­go­ry, beat­ing back the time that was set last year.

Fans who could not make it to the race route to catch a glimpse, saw it all on the Face­book pages of the T&T Power­beat As­so­ci­a­tion, Bmo­bile and CNC3, wit­ness­ing an al­most flaw­less dri­ve by the Ross cousins (Ja­son and Michael Ross) who on­ly on Fri­day at 7 pm had com­plet­ed a change of their fu­el tank which had been filled with foam.

Ross (Ja­son) said: "I ex­pect­ed to win in our class but I nev­er thought we would have won over­all, that was a great achieve­ment. We went in­to the race with a plan to just run as fast as we pos­si­bly can and it worked. The wa­ter out there was in no way easy but we made it in a time of one hour and 20 min­utes."

Last year's 80mph class win­ner Heat­wave had to set­tle for fourth this time around, while Ham­mer Time fol­lowed Mo­bil Out­law in the sec­ond po­si­tion with Blue Ice in third.

Mean­while, last year's 95mph class and over­all win­ner En­er­giza was a mere shad­ow it­self but still man­age to re­tain the class win, as it was the on­ly com­peti­tor on the day. Lim­it­less took the 60mph class win, with Fire Chief and Su­per Tuff pre­vail­ing in the 70mph and Cruis­er Class­es re­spec­tive­ly.

In the big 130 mph cat­e­go­ry Big Thun­der limped home with on­ly one en­gine work­ing for the class win.

The day was set to be a show­down with 18th-time win­ner of the event Mr So­lo Too, but Mr So­lo broke down ear­ly, leav­ing Big Thun­der as the lone com­peti­tor in the race. How­ev­er, ear­ly trou­bles al­so af­fect­ed Buxo and throt­tle­man Al­lan Pereira head­ing up the north coast.

Ac­cord­ing to Buxo: "From the start, we blew a gas­ket and lost pow­er. We were con­cerned if we could make it to To­ba­go and whether we should call it a day, but we de­cid­ed it's ei­ther we make it to To­ba­go or we blew up our en­gine, and in the end, we lost one en­gine. We were just hap­py to make it to To­ba­go."

Buxo's chal­lenges did not on­ly start yes­ter­day but even when the boat was be­ing pre­pared to con­test the race. "We were helped by Mr So­lo, Para­mount, which did not race to­day and Mon­ster. They all gave us parts to put on the boat and al­so good ad­vice, so in a sense, I feel that the win is for all the big boats. I am ap­pre­cia­tive of their help."

Buxo said he will now fo­cus on scrap­ping the boat and build­ing a new one for next year.

GREAT RACE 2020 RE­SULTS

CRUIS­ER CLASS

1st Su­per Tuff

2nd Dream On Su­per Muff

3rd Je­sus Is Com­ing

60MPH CLASS

1st Lim­it­less

2nd Time­less

3rd High Grade

4th Soul Rebel

70MPH CLASS

1st Fire Chief II

2nd Ex­treme Mea­sures

3rd Ketch This

80MPH CLASS

1st Mo­bil Out­law

(Cham­pi­on - 1hr, 14 min 52 sec)

2nd Ham­mer Time

3rd Blue Ice

4th Heat­wave

5th Hero V

6th Hero III

95MPH CLASS

1st En­er­giza

130MPH CLASS

1st Big Thun­der