Hanauer Gladly Takes ‘Gift’ : Hydroplanes: Top challenger, Miss Budweiser, fails to start because engine goes dead before the race.

Six boats were in the water late Sunday afternoon, circling in Mission Bay, jockeying for position before the start of the championship heat of the Budweiser Cup unlimited hydroplane race.

The seventh boat, Miss Budweiser, sat dead in the water, drifting aimlessly toward the dock where its frustrated crew watched helplessly. Tom D’Eath, the year’s leading driver, unlatched the canopy, climbed out of the cockpit and stood on the hull.

The ignition was dead. No spark was being transmitted to the 2,650-horsepower Lycoming T-55 helicopter engine. D’Eath was as out of luck as a driver with a dead battery.

A record Sunday crowd of more than 70,000 lining the beaches waited in vain for what was to have been a classic matchup between Miss Budweiser and Chip Hanauer in Circus Circus, the two craft contending for the championship of the world’s fastest racing boats.

The starter’s gun went off, and Circus Circus, its pink hull gleaming in the sun, raced toward the starting line in front of Fiesta Island. Before it reached the first turn of the 2 1/2-mile course it had a lead of five or six boat lengths. When Miss Budweiser failed to start, the race wasn’t exactly a default--Jim Kropfeld in Winston Eagle kept it from being that--but it was a foregone conclusion it was over.

When Hanauer and Circus Circus completed the 12 1/2-mile race, they were 7.1 seconds ahead of Kropfeld and Winston Eagle, with Holset/Miss Madison, 91X/Jackpot Food Marts and KISW/Miss Rock laboring far back.

“I got a gift, but I’ll take it,” said Hanauer, the defending national champion, after winning his fourth race on the Mission Bay course--more than any other driver in the race’s 24 years.

“I suspected something was up when we were next to the Bud on the dock and I saw a puff of black smoke come out the back of their boat.”

Kropfeld, who lost radio communication with his crew, didn’t know Miss Budweiser had not started.

The ignition box, a $500 item, cost Miss Budweiser a chance at the $30,000 winners share.

Five minutes after the Bud boat was pulled from the water, crew chief Ron Brown inserted a new ignition box and the engine started.

“It was just a lousy piece of timing, to go out when it did,” Brown said. “We had started it twice when it was still on the trailer and it fired both times. It just picked the wrong time to quit.”

Circus Circus and Miss Budweiser had traded victories in preliminary heats and came into the five-lap final with identical records of two firsts and a second in three heats.

Hanauer had defeated D’Eath handily in their first heat, but had lost the second when a computer shorted out and Circus Circus sputtered around the course far behind. In between, each boat had won a heat uncontested.

Dave Villwock and the Circus Circus crew installed the engine the crew calls “The Money Maker” for the championship heat and it performed flawlessly, setting a world record of 143.511 m.p.h. for the final laps. It completed a clean sweep for the pink boat from Las Vegas, which earlier in the day had set a one-lap race record of 154.573 and Saturday had set a qualifying record of 168.128.

The victory was as welcome in Las Vegas as it was in the Circus Circus pits. It cut 400 points from D’Eath’s lead in the championship race and makes next Sunday’s season-finale at Lake Mead the deciding event in the 11-race series. D’Eath and Miss Budweiser’s lead is now 173 points.

The victory was the 35th in Hanauer’s career, more than any other living driver. This season, he and D’Eath have split the 10 races, winning five each.