The sport of H1 Unlimited Hydroplane racing relies on lots of things to run successfully: money (and lots of it), technology (same), and most importantly, people. All of the boats, engines and equipment would be glorified paperweights if there weren’t people with experience to assemble, repair, tune and run them.

Every team that races in the H1 series has multiple specialists with experience in various parts of the boat: engines, gearboxes, propellers, skidfins, data etc. Some crew members have experience in multiple areas and this makes them more valuable to the team, as they can be assigned multiple tasks depending on the priority on any race weekend.

Very few crew members in the sport can be assigned to just about any task on the boat at any time – but current Strong Racing crew man Tommy Alfano is one of them. Tommy has been involved in Unlimited racing since the early 1990’s and has probably been a part of more teams than anyone in the sport – 22 and counting!

Tommy started in Unlimited racing almost by accident – in 1991, during a chance meeting at a used car dealership he was visiting, he met Brian Keogh who at that time was running a dual-automotive-engined effort and due to Tommy’s background (specialty engine builder for Roush Racing), Brian asked Tommy to join the crew, which he did until the effort folded due to lack of funds and success. After joining a team in 1991, Tommy has been a part of an Unlimited crew ever since.

Tommy was interviewed about his experience in Unlimited racing during the 2023 APBA Gold Cup:

H1: What is your background and where are you from?

Tommy: My background is engine building and I am from Detroit. I was with Roush Racing for 22 years, building high performance racing engines of all denominations – BMW, Chevrolet, Ford. Everyone thinks of Roush and they think only of Ford, but it’s not like that. I have a customer out of Virginia – Bimmer World – who had two race cars with an engine in each, a spare and two at the shop. 

H1: So you were building the engines and supporting them at the track?

Tommy: For that BMW customer, I would build the engines, go support them at the track, then send the old ones back and rebuild them. We also did that with the off-road truck stuff. SCORE trucks. The big name then was Carl Renezeder and he was very successful with our Ford engines. After they would race, I would go their shop in Anaheim to change all the bearings in the motors. We couldn’t get those bearings to last more than one race, and if we tried to get them to stretch to two, we were buying blocks and cranks, so it ended up being cheaper to fly me out to replace the bearings than to be buying whole motors after they blew up!

H1: Were you doing NASCAR stuff too?

Tommy: No, all the NASCAR stuff is done down south – we were Roush North – Roush Competition Engines. 

H1: What got you started in Unlimited racing?

Tommy: In 1991, I met Brian Keogh at a used car lot my buddy was working at and I just happened to be there. Brian was there because he knew the owner of the lot and we just started talking.   

H1: Isn’t that crazy that a single conversation changed the course of your life?

Tommy: Absolutely! If I wasn’t there that day, I may never have met Brian. We just started talking about his dual automotive-engined boat. Based on my background as an engine builder, one thing led to another and I joined his crew that year. We started with big block Fords with carburetors, then moved to low-boost superchargers, and that really didn’t work.

H1: So Brian must have been really happy to have met you!

Tommy: He was! But that automotive program really didn’t last that long because it was more feasible to go to turbines.

H1: Are you aware of anyone else that made automotive power work? Why not?

Tommy: No – there are too many moving parts and way too much maintenance. Honestly, you’d probably have to have eight engines to last a weekend, and you’d have to tear every one of them down and check the bearings and replace the springs at minimum – and that’s if you didn’t break anything! With Brian, we actually had a gearbox to tie the two motors together, and the problem was that the back engine would blow up, but the front one didn’t know it was blown up (laughs), and the driver will never catch that. So now the front engine’s making power and destroying the back one. It just would never work. 

The Rutt Brothers tried to do it with big block Chevys, and they never had a gearbox – they just tied the cranks together. There is just no way to get them to turn in sync unless you had a clutch or torque converter or something between them, which didn’t happen.

H1: Trying to get two motors to live together when jumping in and out of the water and getting instantaneous loads from that is just not practical, right?

Tommy: Right – we can put a turbine in the boat and run it all year without touching it! So why would you go automotive?

H1: So how did Brian’s program evolve?

In 1992 we stayed with the automotive boat, then Exide got involved and wanted to go big-time boat racing. We attempted to do that with the automotive boat and came to Tri-Cities with only two engines, then blew one up off the dock. 

After that, we needed to restructure the way we were going with the program to turbine power and needed to find a hull. We ended up buying the Circus Circus boat that Dave Villwock had blown over at Tri-Cities. We bought that and it was repaired out west by Mark Evans, Dan Walters and I believe Pinky was involved. When we came back East, I ended up getting hired as a full-time employee by Exide Batteries so that ended up being my day job. Exide also hired Jay Leckrone, Brian Keogh as owner representative, John Rice, John Lechinski and Chris Brinsfield, so we had 5 or 6 paid employees.

H1: So that was a fairly big, well-funded operation?

Tommy: Yes, Art Hawkins the owner of Exide liked boat racing and wondered why he didn’t have a boat, and Robb Thompson of the marine division said “I didn’t know you wanted one!”, so Robb knew Jimmy King, and he went to Jimmy who was in limited racing back then to drive. We bought the two wing boat from Ron Jones, Jr. and Mark Evans drove the U-9 and Jimmy drove the U-9-2. That lasted a little over a year, and I don’t think they really knew what they were getting into – we bought two boats, two trucks, six engines, gearboxes, etc. and really didn’t do that well. We had some sub-par engines and some failures.

At that point, a friend of mine, Chip knew Ken Muscatel told him about me and Ken got ahold of me so I started working with him. Ken didn’t go to the first race, so I went with Mike Jones in 1995. Then I started working with Ken for quite a few years – Ken was always good to me.

In the late 90’s – early 2000’s I went to Miss Madison where Charlie Wiggins made his driving debut, but he didn’t last the whole year because he got injured in a blowover in his Light boat. The escape hatch blew off and he was injured in a not so good area. I think Jerry Hopp jumped in to finish the weekend and we got a father-son deal like we just had in Tri-Cities. Then we got Nate to finish off the year and he did a fantastic job. Then in 2000 we got Oberto as a sponsor and Steve David drove and was nothing but good.

In 2002, Jimmy King approached me about helping out with Llumar with David Heye as Crew Chief and I went over there and helped them. That is what’s great about this sport – the people you meet and doing things with friends. The minute I committed to go to Llumar, David Heye quit and went over to Ellstrom! They got another guy to be Crew Chief who didn’t last long, so I kinda got thrown into being the Crew Chief even though I was in Detroit.

We survived, even though it was an old boat – it would just go out and come back.

H1: So at that point, you had been in boat racing for 7-8 years, but your background was mainly automotive, and now you are Crew Chief.  How did that work?

Tommy: Yeah, I had a lot of good rapport with a lot of different people I could lean on, like Tracy Bratvold, Butch, Troy. You know back in the day and even now, people will help you. I don’t claim to be a turbine mechanic, but people will help if you ask. I am very diverse, put it that way, and people are willing to help and we can get through it.

With Wurster, it only lasted one year and he wanted to go a different direction – he wanted a different boat and Mark Evans drove it. I don’t remember a ton of that time – it’s all like a fog (laughs).

H1: Well I give you lot of credit for remembering even the parts of it you do – you’ve been around long time! In your time you’ve been around the sport, you’ve worked for multiple owners and drivers and on a lot of hulls 

Tommy: Probably the biggest is Ken – he’s had so many different hulls. Ken will always take me back because he appreciates what I do and what I can do. Like Porter’s team the first year – I worked on it the first year and went back when Cal Phipps came to the second boat in 2014 – I came back for Cal. There was a little resistance because we didn’t leave on the greatest terms, but the team really wanted me. Once I was there Ted put me on the 5 with JMK, and not the 7 with Cal – the reason I came back (laughs). Doesn’t matter – I’ll work on any boat…

H1: So you started as an engine guy and become a boat guy over the years. Where do you see yourself now – a setup guy? Maintenance? Jack of all trades?

Tommy: Whatever needs to get done. My main job right now is the 8 boat. Jeff Campbell has entrusted me to take care of the 8 boat. He says “You’re the boss over there – take care of whatever needs to be done”. Jeff makes all the calls. I don’t claim to be a setup guy, prop guy – I’m not that. I know a lot of what’s worked in the past, so we sometimes have to work out with the data guys what needs to be done. They are data guys and I’m more seat of the pants experience. I call data the Ouija board. This is what I think we need to do – what does the Ouija Board say? (laughs). Jim (Strong Racing’s Jim Sechler) is a pretty smart guy…

H1: You’ve been involved with lots of rebuilds – have you ever done a from the ground up build of an Unlimited?

Tommy: No, just on and off with inboards. Bobby King’s was a new boat but I didn’t have a ton of input on it.

H1: But you’ve done a ton of rebuilds…

Tommy: Yeah. For example, when Ken stuffed it and blew the right side off in Tri-Cities – we took it to JR’s shop I believe. Billy and Jane Schumacher had a right side canoe that was done, and Ken bought it. We worked around the clock that week. JR was the ramrod on the deal – you know – do this, do that. But we rolled it into the Seattle pits on Sunday. We did major damage to Ken’s boat – the 55 – in Evansville and fixed it in Ed’s (Cooper) shop. When we won the championship with Porter in the 7 boat, we lost the prop in Tri-Cities, some of the guys were really bummed. But then people were wondering “what’s Tommy doing?” – I’m getting barrels – we’re putting the SOB on barrels, and with Jeff Campbell, Mike Campbell who flew over, Brooke Tyler and the rest of the guys, we got it back on the water, and if we hadn’t done that we wouldn’t have won the Championship!

H1: That’s what blows my mind about this sport – when sh*t hits the fan, other crews will always help get the boat back on the water. The dedication it takes is amazing…

Tommy: Dedication or the stupidity! (laughs). 

H1: How many of those major rebuilds have you been part of?

Tommy: Too many to count. For instance when I was with Jay and Denise and we tore the bottom out here in Seattle we were here all night, all weekend. Another big one was in Madison with the Oberto – I flew in on Thursday night from Detroit and was in a bed that night, then we bought a used prop from Budweiser that we probably shouldn’t have because it broke and blew out the bottom of the boat. In fixing that deal, I didn’t see a bed until Sunday night! But we took it out of the pits, put it back together and had it back racing on Sunday. (laughs).

H1: As you look around the pits, who are the guys who like you have been here for decades?

Tommy: Start with Madison – there’s Snake – he’s been around as long as me or longer. Jeff and Mike Campbell, Dan Walters, Tom Anderson, Jim Bakke. Starting to see some other faces come back, like Tracy Bratvold – he’s been helping Pyro on the 11 – and their boat has turned around this year.

H1: So after all this time, once you’re in, what does it take to get out this sport (laughs)?

Tommy: It’s almost just physically being able to do it. I’m getting older – I’m 62 now and it’s getting harder and harder to do it – harder to get out of bed (laughs). You just do what you gotta do if your body will let you. 

H1: What was the crew that was the most rewarding or the most fun? What do you remember the most out of your career?

Tommy: What I get out of it the most out of is the people I’ve met. The relationships with the people over the years. Bakke’s one of my best friends and I met him back in ’93. It’s the people. Yeah, it’s cool working on the boats – it’s cool as hell, but the cool wears off. Now it’s all about the people, and the people are what keep me coming back.

(Phone rings) I thought I had the rest of the night off, but now we have to change the gearbox so I gotta go (laughs).

H1: Thanks Tommy – we’ll let you go change that gearbox…

Tommy has been a part of these teams as a crew member:

 

U#	Owner	Driver
U-1	Ted Porter	J. Michael Kelly
U-1	Mike & Lori Jones	Andrew Tate
U-5	Ted Porter	Mike Weber
U-5	Ted Porter	J. Michael Kelly
U-6	Miss Madison	Steve David
U-7	Ted Porter	Mike Allen
U-8	Bill Wurster	Jimmy King/Mark Evans
U-8	Darrell Strong	J. Michael Kelly
U-9	Brian Keogh	Jack Shafer
U-9	Darrell Strong	Corey Peabody
U-9-2	Robb Thompson	Jimmy King/Mark Evans
U-12	Jay Leckrone	Patrick Sankeur
U-14	Jay Leckrone	Greg Hopp
U-14	Ken Muscatel	Ken Muscatel
U-15	Greg Hopp	Greg Hopp
U-19	Ron Jones Jr.	Jimmy King
U-22	Steve Webster	Mike Webster
U-25	Ken Muscatel	Ken Muscatel
U-27	Charlie Wiggins	Cal Phipps
U-55	Ken Muscatel	Ken Muscatel
U-99	Fred Leland	Jimmy King
U-1918	Charlie Wiggins	Cal Phipps