Hanauer, Chip

▪ 1994

      As a boat racer, Chip Hanauer left all the other drivers in his wake. He won his seventh national championship for Unlimited hydroplanes in 1993, which tied Bill Muncey's record. His ninth victory in the Gold Cup, the equivalent of auto racing's Indianapolis 500, broke Muncey's record of eight. With 7 victories in 10 races, following his 7-for-9 mark of 1992, Hanauer had 50 victories in 15 seasons and a .376 career winning percentage, the best in hydroplane racing history.

      Lee Edward Hanauer was born July 1, 1954, in Seattle, Wash., where he continued to live. As children, Hanauer and his friends would tow wooden planks behind their bicycles and pretend they were driving hydroplanes. He began racing powerboats at the age of nine, when he bought a racing boat with $250 he had earned from a paper route and baby-sitting. His mother died a few months later, leaving Chip and his brother, Scott, to live with their father, Stan, a commercial diver, who raised the family for some time on a sailboat.

      At 10, Hanauer placed fifth nationally in the Junior Stock hydroplane class for 9- to 12-year-olds. He won his first American Power Boat Association (APBA) national championship at 18 in the 145 class and gained three more championships the next year. He started racing Unlimited hydroplanes, the biggest racing boats, in 1976, the year of his graduation cum laude from Washington State University. Hanauer taught emotionally disturbed children until he became a full-time powerboat racer in 1978, and he won his first race in Ogden, Utah, in 1979.

      Hanauer's first big opportunity came in 1982, when he joined the Atlas Van Lines team to replace Muncey, who had been killed in a 1981 accident. Hanauer won five races, including a come-from-behind victory for his first Gold Cup, and ended the year with his first Unlimited national and world championships. In 1983, when he was the fastest qualifier for all 10 races and won 3 of them, he earned his first of a record six elections into the APBA's Hall of Champions.

      Also a pioneer, Hanauer drove the first turbine-powered boat, which broke the one-lap record by 7 mph at 140.8 mph in 1984, and introduced the closed cockpit a year later. Currently mandatory, the closed cockpit helps prevent drowning in blow-over accidents, the type that killed Muncey, in which too much air under the front of the boat causes it to tip over backward.

      When Hanauer left boats for auto racing in 1991, he finished seventh out of 127 drivers in the Firehawk Sport Class. The prestigious Miss Budweiser team lured him back to the water in 1992, when he set 39 records. (KEVIN M. LAMB)

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