• Mercury Racing Blog: Team Mercury – Part 1: Bill Seebold

    A recent discovery of classic photos of the Team Mercury outboard tunnel boat race team rekindled my curiosity of the outboard factory war era when Mercury and OMC (Outboard Marine Corporation – parent company of the Johnson and Evinrude brands at the time) battled for bragging rights (and sales) across the globe.

    I thought it would be interesting to interview the team drivers to hear first hand what it was like racing for Team Mercury.

    “Those were the golden years of tunnel competition,” the first words spoken by Bill at the start of our phone interview regarding Team Mercury. “Back then, winning prestigious events such as the 6-hours of Paris or 3-hours of Amsterdam had an direct impact on European outboard sales!”, Bill said

    Team Mercury, 1976 (L-R): Ron Anderson, Jim Schuenke, Jim Welton, Bob Herring, Renato Molinari, Dave Baier, Gary Garbrecht, Gene Trichel.

    Bill began racing kneel-down “Alky” Pro Outboard hydros in the 1950s. It was at the 1968 Pro Outboard Nationals in Depue, Illinois that he met fellow competitor John Woods. Bill and John would hear the other drivers talk about their annual trek to Havasu, Arizona to race tunnel boats over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. After three years of hearing this – Bill and John decided to team up and buy a 20-foot Ron Jones tunnel boat. Bill owned a large Mercury Outboards dealership at the time in St. Louis, Missouri. Even though he was a dealer, he didn’t know anyone within Mercury Hi-Performance. He placed a call to the late Gary Garbrecht, the Mercury Race Team director, to introduce himself and get the serial numbers on the set of race engines he had on order (they ran twin in-line six cylinder outboards on 20-foot boats back then).

    Mercury rigged the boat and took it West for the 1969 Havasu Classic. Bill had never been in a tunnel boat before. The boat was new – never been wet. Bill explained, “The Mercury Team guys gave me a quick run through of the cockpit and the number one thing they said was, ‘never trim beyond this point on the trim indicator.’”

    After two days of testing – Bill was ready to go with John Woods doing the co-driving. They started 80th on the dock (incredibly, 105 boats started the event).

    Read the full blog post here >>
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