Pierce Puts His Mark on Hydroplane Season : Budweiser Cup: Records fall during his Mission Bay duel with Mark Tate.

The new era in unlimited hydroplane competition produced the fastest racing in the sport’s history Sunday as Scott Pierce and Miss Budweiser won their duel with Mark Tate and Winston Eagle in the Budweiser Cup on Mission Bay.

When Chip Hanauer, five-time national champion, and Jim Kropfeld retired last year and Tom D’Eath was injured last May, it removed three legendary drivers from the rolls and left the 1991 season to virtually untried talent.

Pierce, who replaced D’Eath, drove the fastest five laps ever when he averaged 147.807 m.p.h. in the championship final over the 2.5-mile Bill Muncey Memorial Course.

Earlier in the day, Tate, 31, in only his second year as an unlimited driver, set a one-lap record of 155.682 m.p.h. and a three-lap record of 151.207 during the heats.

All three old records (143.511 for five laps, 150.874 for three and 154.573 for one) were set here last year by Hanauer in Miss Circus Circus. Following that race, Hanauer’s boat was sold to Steve Woomer, owner of the Winston Eagle Team, and it is the boat Tate drove Sunday.

“I don’t want anyone to think I’m ready to compare Mark and myself with Hanauer and Kropfeld, but I’m proud of the way this so-called ‘new’ group of drivers is performing,” Pierce said. “We’ve driven faster than anyone ever did, and we’ve done it safely. I think that speaks a lot for us.”

Tate clinched the season driver’s championship with his second-place finish but felt let down at losing the finals after dominating most of the heat races.

“It’s nice to be the champion, and I’ll probably enjoy it more later, but I wanted to win today,” Tate said. “Our motor was down on horsepower, and it showed in the corners. Scott just outpowered us in every corner.”

The two favorites raced side by side, their huge rooster tails obscuring the trailing boats, from the starting line to the first turn in the five-lap final. Winston Eagle edged in front slightly, only to have Miss Budweiser take a two to three boat-length lead coming out of the second corner.

“When I caught the Bud boat going down the back straight, I felt pretty good and thought we had a real chance at winning, but once we came out of the two turns on the lower half of the course, he had really pulled way,” Tate said. “From then on, we never got real close.”

The victory was the ninth for the Miss Budweiser team in San Diego, dating to 1956, the third year of racing on Mission Bay, when Bill Brow was the winner.

Miss Budweiser also came close to clinching the boat championship with one race remaining, Oct. 17 in Honolulu. The only way it could lose to Winston Eagle is if Miss Budweiser failed to finish.

Both favorites suffered setbacks in the three-lap heat races.

Winston Eagle, after setting its one-lap record in the opening lap of the day, broke down on the second lap when “hot end” of its turbine engine let go.

“There wasn’t any warning at all,” Tate said. “I was crusing along about 200 m.p.h. down the back straightway when it just went ‘bang.’ ” Miss Budweiser, which was about 10 boat lengths back at the time, moved to the lead and won easily.

In the second heat, it was a repeat situation, only this time Miss Budweiser was the boat that quit while leading midway through the first lap.

“That was a terrible sound, that ‘boom’ it makes when the hot end blows,” Pierce said. “It was about $40,000 worth of parts blowing out the tail pipe.”

There was little to worry about, however. Little brought seven Lycoming T-558 helicopter engines--originally used in the Chinook helicopters during the Vietnam War--for his team and Woomer had five in his pits.

Winston Eagle was an easy winner in the third heat.

“The way we won that last heat made me feel we had them covered for the final, but I just made a bad decision in engines,” Tate said. “It was my call and the one I picked wound up only about 80 %. Unfortunately, the strong engines were left sitting on the dock.”

Going to Honolulu for the final race, Miss Budweiser has a 400-point lead over Winston Eagle, 3618 to 3218. The maximum points available at a single event are 560.

“We would liked to have won it here, but we’ll get it in Hawaii,” owner Bernie Little said.