Larry Lauterbach the race boat hull builder had to feel far more confident about his chances for success at the Grand Prix Nationals than did Larry Lauterbach the race boat driver. The odds clearly favored a Lauterbach creation to win the race. After all, with five of the eight GP competitors including Golden Nugget, Heavy Hauler, Lauterbach Special, Edelweiss and Advance United all using Lauterbach hulls the remaining likes of Long Gone, Hot Stuff and Miss Jenny did seem slightly outnumbered but definitely not outclassed.
           Such was not the circumstance for Larry Lauterbach when it came to the boat driving side of things. The John Stauffer owned and Lauterbach driven Edelweiss was sixth in the standings going into the Nationals. With only 95 points in the bank the season had been written off as a "change-over" period for the Edelweiss team. Slowly but surely the drivers are reading the handwriting on the deck; to win in the Grand Prix class you need a blown engine. Or to put it another way, the hummers are being huffed out. If you don't believe it just ask Lauterbach.
 

"The normally aspirated boats use to have an advantage in reliability but that isn't the case anymore. Also you have to consider the law of averages. The number of blown boats is growing all the time and even if somebody does have problems chances are one of the huffers is going to last and win the thing. "Just before the Owensboro race in July Lauterbach decided to make the switch and out came the normally aspirated "hummer" and in went a blown "huffer" set-up ala D'Eath and MacPhail in the point leading Long Gone and Advance United boats. The hummer-huffer transition for Lauterbach was surprisingly easy as he got his blown act together after only one race with a little help from some friends.It seems that during their summer blown motor shopping session Stauffer and Lauterbach kept up a continual correspondence with Lee Anderson who last year bought the K class flat bottom stormer Cold Fire from Julian Pettengill. While campaigning the boat last season Anderson acquired quite a garage full of blown Chevrolet engines and parts. At the end of a disappointing year Anderson announced that he was through with racing and the entire operation became classified ad listings.
 

          Lauterbach was extremely interested in the Anderson deal but he was even more enticed with a Hemi engine that Advance United owner Fred Wines was selling after he obtained the motor from Canadian Jules LeBuff. The Edelweiss crew opted for Wines' engine because they had run injected Chrysler equipment previously and had a shelf full of leftover components that they figured might ease the maintenance bill a bit.
          Those extra parts were called into duty quickly as the Chrysler had a very short life span, dying a disgusting smoke-filled death while leading at Owensboro. Because of the engine failure Lauterbach couldn't make the northern trek to Valleyfield, Canada for the third race of the season and he wasn't expected to compete at Nationals stop number four at Lake Calhoun in Minnesota either.
 

          A few short weeks prior to the double points meet however the Edelweiss situation took a turn for the better.
          Lauterbach swung a deal with Anderson to borrow, mind you, a Bobby Wilton 500 inch huffer Chevrolet just for the Minnesota event. The rumor mill had it that the reason Anderson was in such a generous mood was he is extremely interested in GP racing and wants to purchase Edelweiss as there is a two year waiting period for a new Lauterbach hull. After the boat's heart transplant performance at the Nationals, the already stiff asking price probably went up another couple of G's. 
          Don't get the idea that Lauterbach was all alone on spacious Lake Calhoun which, although not surveyed, is almost a mirrored lay-out of record setting Green Lake in Seattle, Washington. The Grand Prix class prides themselves in close competition and although they didn't live up to the preposterous 18 boat fleet promised, their racing reputation proved well deserved.
 

          To warm up the huge Aquatennial crowd the GP boats divided up into two sections for what proved a very expensive exhibition for Les Brown's Long Gone.
          As a crowd pleasing preview, race officials had the injected and blown boats run separate three lap heats to show off their deck-to-deck image. Things couldn't have been closer as Kent MacPhail in the checkerboard Advance United handled the blown section when D'Eath in the Jones hull Long Gone sent a crankshaft just north of the oil pan on the second lap. D'Eath had nothing to worry about however as the bulging hole in Brown's wallet apparently wasn't quite as bad as the one in the bottom of the high dollar Chrysler block, and a fresh spare engine was waiting, with plumbing attached, on the beach.
         Because there were only eight boats entered at the Nationals all drivers were automatically seeded into the two "points counting" heats. The exhibitions were over. The business at hand was racing. The Grand Prix class is interesting to watch for several reasons. First of all the boats really should be classified as "unlimited limiteds" because the only rules are 500 cubic inches max on the motor and 20 feet minimum on the boat length. Consequently, because of the huffers the boats can't begin to efficiently handle the horsepower involved. 
 

         Although they are classified as "limited" the truth of the matter is the horse power rating may as well be unlimited, because as former Gold Cup winning Tom D'Eath said, "These boats are much harder to handle than an Unlimited hydroplane because the power to weight ratio is so different. I bet we see the emergence of bigger hulls in GP racing in just a few short years."
        Another reason the GP class has the boating world talking is this division seems to have attracted the best in the racing business. This point is given   credence when you consider that along with D'Eath, Terry Turner (Lauterbach Special), Tom Kropfeld (Golden Nugget) and Gordy Reed (Miss Jenny) are all members of the APBA Hall of Champions. Add it up and that's half of the Nationals' starting fleet. 
        The crowd was off their lawn chairs for one of the few times during the afternoon when the boats made their parade laps for the start of GP round one. With an almost even mixture of hummers and huffers the fight began. 
        Perhaps surprisingly the expected first heat dual between D'Eath and MacPhail was for second place. Going into the Nationals D'Eath was leading the numbers rackets with 869 while MacPhail had won two of the first three races but was still in second place with 800 points. Respective owners Fred Wines and Les Brown are the big bucks operators in Grand Prix racing and to say the two have a rivalry developing would be a radical understatement. The upset leader from start to finish however was the newly powered Edelweiss with Larry Lauterbach at the wheel.
 

        Lap after lap MacPhail tried desperately to catch Lauterbach and although he would close up distances by criss-crossing the wake, the speeding Edelweiss was handling perfectly and could not be caught. D'Eath meanwhile was quite a way back in third ahead of Dave Sutton in Heavy Hauler and Terry Turner in Lauterbach Special. Jerry Waldecker in the sleek cab-over Hot Stuff and Gordy Reed in the recently uncrated Miss Jenny, did not finish. Remember earlier about the handwriting being on the deck the first three boats in the opening heat were all using blown motors. 
       Round two was very interesting. The race was over really before it started as Long Gone put a hole shot on everyone else and the crowd was wondering if the highly paid D'Eath had made a miscue and jumped the gun. Nothing could be further from the truth as apparently D'Eath was the only one paying attention as he had the length of the football field on the fleet before the first turn.
        But the usually attentive Larry Lauterbach had an excuse for not being nominated to the "Hall of Champions" and it was a good one. Lauterbach knew that to win the Nationals he merely had to keep MacPhail behind him and D'Eath within visual contact. At the start Lauterbach decided to forget about the clock and merely follow MacPhail.
        As it turned out Lauterbach couldn't have picked a worse partner for playing foliow-the-leader. MacPhail's mind all afternoon had not been completely on boat racing. Advance United owner Fred Wines sponsored the clash and made the mistake of appointing MacPhail as Race Chairman. In addition to the GP boats the Aquatennial featured assorted local flat-bottom and hydro limited classes and it turned out that MacPhail was busy handling this detail and that detail all afternoon. The only detail he didn't take care of was starting the second heat. 
        "We really wanted the hometown people to see what Grand Prix racing is all about and I'm afraid that with Kent as Race Director that took more of our time than preparing our own team," said a dejected Wines after the Nationals. "It won't be the same next year." 
         MacPhail's miscue really didn't make a difference as the Advance United boat did not even finish because one ear of its two bladded prop was bent completely out of shape after the first lap.
         Lauterbach never made an attempt to catch D'Eath, realizing that the number two slot really meant the number one spot ...overall. Kropfeld in the normally as pirated humming Golden Nugget nabbed third while Sutton was fourth again in the Heavy Hauler. Turner never got Don Ryan's Lauterbach Special off the.beach. Reed and Waldecker once again did not finish and where you consider that neither Hot Stuff or Miss Jenny finished either heat it was really a six boat race.
         In the final standings it was Edelweiss, Long Gone, Heavy Hauler and Advance United in that order. D'Eath, who had a few anxious moments when his mill started backfiring on the last lap of the second heat, remains in first place nationally with a slightly more comfortable 331 point bulge over Advance United.
        Even with the win at the Nationals, Lauterbach knows that he is hopelessly out of the points chase this year but that really doesn't matter much anymore. The GP class is very, very competitive and Lauterbach the huffer knows that MacPhail and D'Eath will now have more company at the top.