DESCRIPTION:
Michel Productions delivers footage of the 2014 Detroit Gold Cup. The Detroit Gold Cup is in its 98th year and is the oldest active trophy in motor sports. Due to WW2 there was no cup awarded between 1942 - 1945. This year's winner 28 year old Jimmy Shane who pilots the U-6 Oberto Hydroplane is the youngest champion of the oldest motor sports trophy. Congrats!

Jimmy Shane crossed the finish line a quarter lap behind the U-1 Graham Trucking pilot Michael Kelly. Jimmy Shane won as a result of Michael Kelly crossing the one-minute race marker too soon at the beginning of the race costing him a 1 lap penalty and the 2014 A.P.B.A. Detroit Gold Cup.

The Gold Cup is to power boat racing what the Stanley Cup is to hockey, what the Super Bowl is to football and what the World Series is to baseball.

The trophy was first awarded in 1904 as the APBA Challenge Cup that took place on the Hudson River. Hydroplane racing became a tradition in Detroit when designer Christopher Columbus Smith built a Detroit-based boat that would crack the 60 miles-per-hour speed barrier, capturing the Gold Cup in 1915.The first major race to be run on the Detroit River was the 1916 APBA Gold Cup.

In first series of Hydroplanes in 1904 were 59-foot standard powered by a 110-horsepower standard engine. By 1916 at the first major Detroit Gold Cup race, the Christopher Columbus Smith boat MISS DETROIT was a single-step hydroplane, equipped with a 250-horsepower Sterling engine that cracked the 60MPH barrier. In 1920, at the wheel of his twin Smith-Liberty-powered MISS AMERICA, Wood averaged a phenomenal 70.412 miles per hour in the 30-mile Final Heat on a 5-mile course. The record would stand until 1946. The first Gold Cup victory by a three-point hydroplane occurred in 1939. Unlike the step hydroplanes, the three- pointers rode on the tips of two pontoon-like running surfaces called sponsons and a completely submerged propeller. (Not until the late 1940s would the boats start to "propride.") The concept would forever alter the course of competitive power boating.

Following World War II, Gold Cup racing resumed. The introduction of converted Allison and Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engines, developed for the war effort, produced new enthusiasm for America's premier power boat racing event. The nickname of "Thunderboats" would soon come to be due to the incredible loudness of the engines. In 1946 the Miss Golden Gate III became the first hydroplane to be powered by an Allison V-1710 -- she was designed and driven by Dan Arena.

The most remarkable thunderboat engine was probably the V-1710-E27 experimental turbo-compound engine. This unique engine was the first turbo-compound or "power-feedback" engine and was way ahead of its time. Based on an E-22 power section with auxiliary stage supercharger, it used a General Electric CT-1 power turbine which was adapted from the exhaust turbine of a CH-5 turbosupercharger. The turbine drove the crankshaft through a 5.953 reduction gear. The engine compression was reduced to 6.0:1 to facilitate high supercharger boost pressure of 100 in hg (35 psig). Using 115/145 PN fuel with ADI injection, this engine was able to develop 2,980 hp at 3,200 rpm and 100 in hg boost at sea level.

In 1950 the Allison powered Slo-mo-shun IV, owned and driven by Stan Sayres set a new mile straightaway record of 160.322 mph. Two years later the Slo-mo-shun IV raised the mark to 178.497, with a one-way run of 185.627 on Seattle's Lake Washington. In 1962 the mile straightaway record was set by the Allison-powered Miss U.S. I of 200.419 mph set at Gunthersville, Al, driven by Roy Duby. This was the first boat to break the 200 mph barrier, and this record stands to this day for piston powered boats.

A modern Unlimited Hydroplane is made of aluminum, fiberglass, carbon fiber and graphite composites, and weighs a minimum of 6750 pounds in race trim. The boats are between 28 and 32 feet long, 12 to 14 1/2 feet wide and about seven feet from the bottom of the rudder to the top of the rear wing. Unlimited hydroplanes are powered by a single Lycoming T-55 L-7 turbine engine that once powered our military’s Chinook helicopters from as far back as the Vietnam War. The turbine is capable of outputs of around 3000 HP and runs on Jet-A (kerosene) fuel.