Pierce Takes First in Hydroplane Qualifying : Racing: Tate comes up just short in preparation for today’s event.

Scott Pierce and the Miss Budweiser continued their domination of unlimited hydroplane qualifying Saturday at Mission Bay, but not without the closest challenge of the season.

Pierce made his winning run of 161.662 m.p.h. Friday and let it stand when Mark Tate and the Winston Eagle came an eyelash short with a 161.381 effort late in Saturday’s qualifying for today’s Budweiser Cup over the 2 1/2-mile Bill Muncey Memorial Course.

It was the sixth consecutive race in which Pierce has had the fastest boat on the water.

“We thought we had a winning run going when we topped out at 200 m.p.h. on both straightaways, but we lost the motor in the fourth turn and didn’t have much left for the final drive to the finish line,” Tate said.

Pierce and the Budweiser crew were watching intently as the Winston Eagle made its run, but when Tate pulled the orange boat back to the dock, they relaxed.

The third fastest qualifier, Oh Boy! Oberto, set a world piston-driven record of 147.953 m.p.h. with Mitch Evans of Chelan, Wash., driving. Evans set the old record of 143.511 here last year in the same boat, although its name then was Cooper’s Express.

Tate and Pierce, who have won two of the past five races in the Unlimited Hydroplane Series, will race today in three three-lap heats and a five-lap championship final.

“Qualifying won’t mean a thing when we line up for that first heat,” Pierce said. “We’ll be going after that first turn with all we’ve got so we can get the inside line the rest of the way.”

In an unusual circumstance, caused when the Unlimited Racing Commission said that a race last November in Honolulu would count toward the 1991 championship, Tate is close to clinching the driver’s title in Winston Eagle, and Miss Budweiser is a near cinch to win boat honors.

Tate leads Pierce by 524 points, but 427 of Tate’s came when he finished second at Honolulu in the Oh Boy! Oberto boat.

When Jim Kropfeld, driver of the Winston Eagle, retired after the Honolulu race, Tate replaced him.

“It’s been tough, trying to catch Tate when he had all those Oberto points before I came into the game,” Pierce said. “The day they ran at Pearl Harbor, I was over on Maui getting some suntan.”

Miss Budweiser leads the Winston Eagle by 300 points, but 560 of its 3,108 came at Honolulu where Tom D’Eath drove to the victory.

“I could win the boat championship by finishing second in every heat and the last two finals to the Winston Eagle, but I’d be out of a job, too,” Pierce said. “Winning the race is the most important thing this weekend for (boat owner Bernie Little), so we won’t be backing off.”

The season will end, as it started, in Honolulu, with the Outrigger Hotels Topgun Hydrofest Oct. 27 at Pearl Harbor.

“The chances of my winning the driver’s championship are about the same as losing the boat championship, just about impossible,” Pierce said. “I would need to win every heat and both finals and have Tate go dead in the water and not finish in one of the finals.”

Pierce, although in his first year at the helm of Miss Budweiser, is a veteran of nine years in unlimited hydroplanes. Once he decided he wanted to be a boat racer, Pierce moved from his home in Upland to Seattle to be near the heart of the sport. While living in Upland, he won five national go-cart championships.

He almost quit the sport after the 1989 season after surviving three blowovers. A blowover is caused when air gets beneath the boat, the boat lifts in the air like a plane taking off and then falls backward in the water--bottom side up.

“I’d have been dead three times if it weren’t for the capsule we have adapted from the F-14 Tomcat,” Pierce said. “When I came into the sport in 1981, first Bill Muncey and then Dean Chenoweth were both killed in blowovers. That was pretty scary for a 24-year-old, but it was after that that people started working toward a waterproof capsule.”

Even though they weren’t life-threatening, the blowovers left Pierce badly injured, so he sat out most of 1990, working as a test driver for Little’s Miss Budweiser.

“I was there in case something happened to Tom (D’Eath), but mostly I used the year to decide if I wanted to continue as a driver. I had driven for nine years and the opportunities seemed few and far between to get ahead, and then Tom got hurt racing a car and here I am.”

D’Eath suffered a broken neck in a racing accident at Charlotte, N.C., last May.

Pierce almost blew his big opportunity. In the Gold Cup, powerboat racing’s most important race, Pierce jumped the gun, was penalized a lap and finished last. It was his first start for Little.

“It was just a rookie mistake. I wasn’t a rookie in one sense of the word, but I was a rookie in a fast boat like Miss Budweiser. I just miscalculated how fast it would get to the finish line and when I realized what was happening, it was too late. I’m just happy Mr. Little was patient with me. I could have blown the whole thing right there.”