Motul Monster family vibe for Great Race

FOR the first time in the history of the TT Great Race, there will be two father and son pairs on board the same boat when the 50th edition of the inter-island race takes off on Saturday.

Motul Monster, competing for the first time since 2015, will be aiming for another Great Race victory after winning a hat-trick of titles from 2013 to 2015 as Total Monster. Their new title sponsor is Motul which brought about the name change. Other main sponsors of Motul Monster are VP Racing Fuel and Peake Yacht Services.

Driver Joey Sabeeney will be joined by his 19 year old son Joshua, who will be one of the navigators. The father and son duo of Peter and Daniel Peake will serve as a throttleman and navigator respectively, adding to the family atmosphere on Motul Monster. Daniel, who is now 27 years old, started racing at 19 with the senior members of Monster. Joey, who had the privilege of competing in the 25th edition of the Great Race, is looking forward to the experience of racing with his son Joshua and the Peake family.

“My first Great Race was in 1993, which was the 25th anniversary of the Great Race; I was the first boat to Tobago in that year in a boat called Diamond Cut. This year is the 50th running and I have my son in the boat with me and it is going to be his first Great Race. Also for the first time in the history of the Great Race, you will have two fathers and two sons competing on the same team.”

Joey said the Motul Monster team is eager to hit the water on Saturday after competing at a high level in the regattas this year. “We returned at the beginning of the season because we wanted to compete in this year’s running as it is the 50th. We won our class for the year in high points, we won 10 out of the 12 races for the year...We are going into the Great Race feeling very confident right now,” he declared.

Joey said not much adjustments have been made to Motul Monster since last competing in 2015, but the major difference is their fuel.

“We are basically running the same engines that we ran before, the only change we have made from 2015 to now is the type of fuel that we are running. We are now running on ethanol. We used to run on high octane gas before.

The ethanol supposedly gives you a little more reliability, the engines run a lot cooler on ethanol and it is also a slighter cheaper fuel to run as well, so we decided to go that way.”

Motul Monster is expected to be the only vessel running on ethanol for this year’s Great Race.