What started with the historic 125-mph Lieutenant Governor Inaugural Run—featuring MTI founder Randy Scism on the throttles of a new MTI 390X catamaran and Missouri Lieutenant Governor David Wasinger steering the 39-footer—on the brand new Lake of the Ozarks Shootout course to kick off the 37th annual event that moved to Grand Glaize Arm & Dog Days Bar & Grill in Osage Beach, Mo., ended with some extraordinary highlights not to mention several disappointing outcomes for the teams that traveled from across the country to compete in the two-day top-speed contest that concludes Sunday.

With Rusty Williams on the throttles and Adam Seraphine on the wheel, Slug Hefner’s Dirty Duck Skater was the fastest boat during the first day of competition on the new Lake of the Ozarks Shootout course. Photos by Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix

Easily the highest high of the first day of the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout presented by Lippert and powered by Performance Boat Center belonged to the Dirty Duck team of throttleman Rusty Williams and driver Adam Seraphine in Slug Hefner’s Skater Powerboats 438 catamaran. The team needed just one run to best its impressive 2024 top speed of 201 mph with a jaw-dropping 215 mph on the new three-quarter-mile course. Hefner, who on Tuesday was inducted into the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout Bob Morgan Memorial Hall of Fame, was ecstatic that his Skater powered by twin turbocharged Carson Brummett engines pumping up 2,000-plus-hp aside.

And while the Skater did not need to run again on Saturday as no other boat, including the 10-time defending overall Top Gun champion American Ethanol, reached the 200-mph mark, Hefner and company believe the 43-footer can run even faster—and they are likely to give it a go on Sunday.

“That was a very good run; we thought the boat had the speed in it thanks to all of the adjustments Carson made to the motors, but you never know what will happen,” said Williams, the salesman and delivery captain for Performance Boat Center who has built quite an impressive boat racing resumé in the past decade. “We went with the bigger wheels this morning, expecting the boat would be able to pull them and apparently it can. Those engines are so amazing, and the Skater hull is remarkable at that speed.”

Williams’ teammate, a longtime Performance Boat Center customer from Minnesota, Seraphine said he’s been fast in many boats, even upward of 190 mph, but he’d never reached the exclusive 200-mph club before today.

“That run was amazing and you know the crazy thing is there were things we could improve on,” Seraphine said. “It felt absolutely incredible, but we know there’s more there, which is why we want to run again. I was able to spend some time in the boat with Rusty when I was at the lake last week going through the prep work and making sure all the systems were good to go. We got it on plane a few times and did five or six good pulls. We didn’t go all out, but we got it into the mid-190s on a couple of passes before backing out of it.”

The Team Yahoo Skater reached a very respectable 185 mph on Saturday, but the team said it expects the boat to run faster on Sunday.

Not right on Dirty Duck’s heels, but respectable nonetheless, the Texas-based Team Yahoo Skater 368 cat owned and throttled by Curtis Morris and driven by Jamin Jones reached 185 mph to leave the team sitting in second place overall. Although he knows catching Dirty Duck is a very longshot, Jones said he believes the Skater and its twin 2,000-plus-hp Boostpower USA engines can top the 200-mph mark, and that is his goal for Sunday.

After those two Skaters, there were several MTIs, Mystics, DCBs and other Skaters that topped 140 and 150 mph on the three-quarter-mile course. Travis Oliver’s 48-foot MTI, Shake And Bake, sits at 161 mph along with a couple of DCBs, an M31 driven by company vice president (and Shootout Hall of Famer) Tony Chiaramonte and an M35 driven by customer Hobie Jarrard.

Longtime Shootout participant Jeffrey Clark ran his DCB M31 up to 152 mph and Warren Duke ran his outboard-powered 28 Skater to 151 mph, both of which were a little faster than the 150-mph pass recorded by the XINSURANCE turbine-powered 50-foot Mystic Powerboats catamaran throttled by Statement Marine owner and offshore racer Nick Buis and driven by one of the most famous people at the Lake of the Ozarks for the weekend, Cleetus McFarland.

If you don’t know the name, search Cleetus McFarland, or just Cleetus—that’s how popular the Florida-based YouTube content creator is. McFarland, who owns Freedom Factory USA in Bradenton, Fla., and races cars in his free time, got connected with the XINSURANCE team through owner Rick J. Lindsey and took Lindsey up on the offer to see what an “exhibition pass” at 150 mph felt like in a 50-foot boat.

“I really enjoyed running that boat today but I think I’ll stick to racing on land,” joked McFarland during the Shootout livestream broadcast on Saturday. “Besides the ‘ground’ moving on you the entire time, the main difference racing on the water is the drag. I got a chance to drive the Mystic on Friday in the bigger water with everyone out there running around, and wow is that boat impressive. I have to thank XINSURANCE for inviting me to join the team for such a great opportunity. This lake is unbelievable; I know this won’t be my last time here.”

Nick Buis and YouTube influencer Cleetus McFarland made one pass in the turbine-powered Mystic XINSURANCE and went 150 mph.

Buis said it was great to have McFarland join them for the run.

“We didn’t want to push it too much so it was a perfect chance to show Cleetus what high-performance boating is all about,” said Buis, who said he enjoyed watching his teenage son, Owen, and Cameron Turk, his teammate J.J. Turk’s teenage son, run the XINSURANCE Cat 300-class 24-foot Wicked to 92 mph (their goal is to reach 100 mph on Sunday). “We just wanted to make a good pass to start the day off and see what happens later.”

While the XINSURANCE team, which set a new Dam To Dam record at the lake on Thursday morning, had no intention of vying for the overall Top Gun title, two other teams with canopied Mystic catamarans that could compete with Dirty Duck’s top speed were left hoping Sunday would be their day.

The defending champion American Ethanol—a quad-engine 51-foot Mystic owned by Shootout Hall of Famer Don Onken—faced mechanical issues throughout the day and was never able to complete a pass. The team vowed to work through the evening to give driver Tony Battiato and throttleman John Cosker, who is the founder of Mystic, a chance at winning an 11th straight title.

Meanwhile the highly anticipated debut of the Darana Hybrid 50-foot Mystic—the reborn Spirit of Qatar, which in 2014 shattered the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout speed record with a 244-mph pass on the then-mile-long course—fell short of expectations as the team battled electrical gremlins and never made it over to the start boat to make a pass. According to legendary throttleman Steve Curtis, who is running the turbine-powered boat with owner/driver Darryl Cuttell, the owner of Darana Hybrid Electro-Mechanical Solutions in Hamilton, Ohio, the team is eager to put the 50-footer and its twin 3,500-hp engines to the test.

Unfortunately for many Shootout fans, the fastest V-bottom to ever participate in the event—the Factory Billet 51-foot Outerlimits—ran into a mechanical issue during testing on Friday and had to withdraw from the competition this year. But knowing owner Jim Schultz, who was inducted into the Shootout Hall of Fame in 2024, he will not give up on his pursuit to eclipse 190 mph.

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Check out the slideshow above for several more images of Shootout participants on the new Grand Glaize Arm course.

At the Shootout for the first time with the Canadian company’s all-new 32-foot catamaran, Tuff Marine owner Mark Weigl and his son, Thomas, were pleased with the boat’s performance after making three passes, one of which was limited by an engine overheating issue. In their first pass in Headless Horseman, which is powered by twin Mercury Racing 300R engines, the boat reached 119 mph. Following the incomplete second attempt later in the afternoon, the father-and-son duo ran again, this time hitting a respectable 121 mph.

“We are very happy with 121 mph,” said Mark Weigl, who was satisfied enough that he may not run the boat on Sunday. “If the weather conditions are the same tomorrow, then there’s sort of no point in running again. But if we wake up and it’s atmospherically better, then we’ll consider going back out. It’s always interesting how things unfold, like when we did that second run—where we overheated the motor—we were getting too excited, and then, you know, it’s like a little wake-up call: ‘This is serious stuff.’ And so we went back and regrouped and came back to hit 121, which was lovely.

Between its 121-mph run on Saturday and the amount of attention the Tuff 32 Headless Horseman received at Wednesday’s Shootout on the Strip, the very first catamaran from Tuff Marine enjoyed quite a debut at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout.

“That was kind of our goal,” he added. “That was exactly where are numbers were. We thought it better do a minimum of 119 mph but wouldn’t it be great if we got to 121 mph?”

Thomas Weigl also made one pass in a customer’s single-engine Tuff Marine 36 V-bottom and recorded a top speed of 120 mph in the 36-footer, which he felt was good but could have been faster.

“Thomas wanted to go again but the owner was completely satisfied with that speed and already put the boat on the trailer,” Mark Weigl said. “I thought the run looked very nice but Thomas thought he could get more out of it.”

Some more impressive speeds from Saturday included Phantom Boats founder Will Smith reaching 128 mph in his twin outboard-powered Phantom Speedster V-bottom, New York’s Kelly O’Hara hitting 147 mph—twice—in his canopied 40-foot MTI catamaran Holy Cow IV, Adam Carpenter of Angola, Ind., running 143 mph in his Skater 388 Pussycat, and Mitch Kramer of Maryland Offshore Performance Marine Center being clocked at 143 mph in the Voided Warranty 39 Carbon Doug Wright Powerboats cat powered by a pair of modified Mercury Racing 500R outboard engines.

Maryland’s Mitch Kramer ran the DWR 39 Carbon demo boat to 143 mph on the three-quarter-mile course.

The competition was strong in the Super Stock class, which features canopied catamarans powered by twin Mercury Racing 300R engines. Between Sabrina Kowalik of Team Allen Lawn Care & Landscaping (118 mph) and Leanna Shadlow of the Demon Bikini race team (117 mph), the two females piloting the two 32-foot Doug Wright catamarans are neck and neck heading into Sunday with Ryan Williams of the Mom Ain’t Happy team not far behind after completing one pass at 110 mph in his team’s Doug Wright.

Running a couple of new pleasure version Doug Wright catamarans with twin Mercury Racing 500R engines were Missouri’s Michael Butterfield, who hit 122 mph in his 42 Carbon, and California’s Mick Tedder, who reached 111 mph in his 39 Carbon. Both models were recently delivered by new DWR/Doug Wright Powerboats owner Justin Wagner (a 2025 Hall of Fame inductee) and his team at Waves and Wheels in Osage Beach, Mo.

Another Hall of Famer, Performance Boat Center’s Myrick Coil, had an eventful day on the water. After driving the Monster Energy/M CON Pro Class One Skater catamaran with twin Mercury Racing 1100 engines to a top speed of 145 mph and hitting 126 mph in a new Performance Powerboats P420 cat with a pair of Mercury Racing 500R engines, Coil and owner/throttleman Tyler Miller of Kansas raced against an aerobatic stunt plane in the Monster Energy/M CON Skater to end the afternoon.

The exhibition race and aerobatic stunt show was an appropriate way to end a day of firsts for an event that successfully relocated to just its third host venue and course in 37 years. And the exhibition run with the second highest-ranking state official at the wheel with the event’s original Top Gun from 1989, was a fitting way to begin the day.

MTI founder Randy Scism was joined for the first pass on the new Shootout course by Missouri Lieutenant Governor David Wasinger in a new MTI 390X powered by twin Mercury Racing 500R engines.

“That was such a smooth ride,” Wasinger said while sitting in for part of the Shootout later in the morning. “Randy did such a fantastic job; he’s such a pro. It was smooth as glass out there for the Lieutenant Governor Inaugural Run. And you know what? I can say that I held the course record for at least three minutes.”

Wasinger laughed and later confirmed his involvement with the Shootout for the foreseeable future, citing the event as one of the state’s

“I was already part of what I’ve been told is the 100-mph club because Myrick (Coil) took me out a few weeks ago to shoot a promo video, but now I can say I’ve been 125 mph, which is plenty fast for me,” he added. “I’d never been that fast and I’d never seen so many boats in my life. Before we took off I told Randy I’d never seen anything like this. It was boats as far as the eye can see.”

While future numbers may prove just that, there’s no denying the new course and host location added a lot of buzz, features and likely more spectator interest. Let’s hope Sunday provides another day of safe and positive competition, and in the words of another Hall of Famer—Shootout broadcaster Bob Teague—“I’m more excited for Sunday than I have been in a long time. There are just a lot of things that could happen on day two that can decide a lot of classes, including the overall Top Gun.”