good morning, dave. good morning, dave. [taps on window] dave. both: hey, dave. hey. hey, dave. mr. dave. dave? sup, dave? dave? dave? dave? dave! dave? hi, dave. oh, dave s looking for you. [singing] hey, dave. [loud] yo, dave! announcer: in a small business, it s all you. that s why you have us. at staples, we have low prices on everything your small business needs. staples. that was easy.
years later, dave will have good reason to be thankful for that safer capsule. in the summer of 2009, he enters thunder on the ohio, a race he s won ten times before. in his first heat another driver loses control and hits dave dave s boat. dave flips over and smashes into the water. but dave s work redesigning the driver s capsule pays off. it stays in one piece, and he waits in safety for help to arrive. the only injury i got was a finger injury, where it broke a knuckle in the finger. as boat accidents go, i ll take that. that s a good one. after decades of speeding, crashing and tumbling through the air, dave says driving a hydro plane is a thrill only few can experience. but many more can enjoy watching
it s more than fast enough to break the world record. but the burst of speed also breaks the boat s rudder. okay, everybody the race is on hold. there s a hole in it. we need him off the course. luckily dave isn t hurt in this record stunt. mashed the propeller and cleared the propeller and strut off the boat. but it s a very different story seven years earlier. dave was at the columbia cup championship in washington state, ready to claim the record for the most consecutive race wins. this would be his 20th win in a row. but as he bursts out of the gate, almost instantly the boat has hit two waves in a row. at top speed, the force is too much and the hydro plane blows
in 2004, he decides to see just how fast he can drive his legendary hydro plane, miss budweiser and try for the straightway speed record. we ll be racing against time and mother nature. we ll see what we re made of. dave doesn t let his nerves show. one of the problems in setting records is you know you re going to experience things that other people have not. everybody pay attention. the course is live. the speed record is calculated by averaging the time over two one-kilometer runs. 9.83. the speed to beat is 198 miles per hour. dave is buckled in and hits the gas. here he comes. 213.437 miles an hour. he s on record pace over the first leg. for the second leg, he gives it everything he s got. 225. 225. 30 he s out of it.
in the blink of an eye, a piece of equipment fails or a driver makes a mistake, a boat could be 50 feet up in the air. upside down or backwards. at first glance, dave might look more like a banker than a daredevil, but he s been racing hydroplanes for years and been in some pretty dramatic crashes. you re traveling at over a football field per second. so if you aren t anticipating what what s going to happen, you re likely to crash. they flip through the air as if they weigh nothing, but these boats are 30 feet long, 7,000 pounds with 4,000 horsepower engine. it is a celebration of success. everything about it is bigger