Team Bermuda Wins Super Stock Class at St. Petersburg Powerboat Grand Prix

David Selley held the S-25 Team Bermuda Doug Wright flat through four laps of rough Tampa Bay chop, crossed the line in 12 minutes 24.295 seconds, and left two-time F1H2O world champion Shaun Torrente nearly 37 seconds behind. That margin, in a class where every team on the water runs an identical 32-foot twin-outboard catamaran, says everything about what Team Bermuda got right at the 6th Annual Monster Energy St. Petersburg Powerboat Grand Prix on March 29.

Selley and owner/throttleman Steven Bridges had already topped qualifying on Saturday, clocking 10 minutes 49 seconds over the mile-long offshore course to claim pole for the Super Stock field. Come race day, they never surrendered the lead across all four circuits, posting a fastest lap of 3 minutes 35 seconds and an average of 3 minutes 36 seconds. The conditions were rough throughout; the short, stacked swells off the St. Petersburg downtown waterfront can unsettle a cat instantly if the trim isn't right from the first buoy, and Team Bermuda never looked rattled.

In Super Stock, the blueprint is uniform: a 32-foot Doug Wright catamaran powered by twin Mercury Racing outboards, a package capable of approaching 110 mph in clean water. Because the hardware is so tightly spec'd across the field, the margins come down to setup, maintenance and boat handling through the corners. Team Bermuda's S-25 went into St. Pete with a fresh bottom laid by Scott Porta and full-season technical preparation handled by Grant's Signature Racing out of Bradenton, Florida. The GL Construction sponsorship has backed the program throughout, and that sustained investment showed in how cleanly the boat handled the chop all four laps.

"Today represents the result of an extraordinary amount of hard work, dedication and teamwork," Selley said after taking the checkered flag. Bridges, who has been building this program for three seasons on the North American offshore circuit, put the emotional weight on it plainly: "This weekend meant a lot — back-to-back wins and a chance to stand on top of the podium, which has been a long time coming."

Torrente, whose STR-Allied S-54 entry crossed second, is not a name that trails quietly off any results sheet. The two-time F1H2O world champion previously raced a version of the same Doug Wright hull when Bridges leased him the boat before Team Bermuda entered as principals. He knows exactly what the platform can do, and getting beaten wire-to-wire by Selley and Bridges makes him the most motivated rival heading into the next round. The circuit moves to New Orleans in two weeks, and that gap will sharpen focus in both camps.

The Bermuda contingent rounded out with Luis Martins and Nick Imprescia finishing sixth in the S-12 Nuff Said, their own 32-foot Doug Wright entry, in 13 minutes 01.973 seconds. Two Bermuda hulls in the top six of a U.S.-dominated Super Stock field is not an accident; it reflects a deliberate, multi-team commitment to the Race World Offshore Series that has been building quietly for years.

For anyone tracking where offshore catamaran development is heading, St. Pete added another data point to the case for the 32-foot twin-outboard layout in open-water, rough-condition racing. Light enough to skip across chop, wide enough to hold a predictable line through the turns: Team Bermuda just proved the formula works when the preparation is right.