Lee Daniel wins second straight Bradenton Area River Regatta powerboat race

By Jason Dill jdill@bradenton.com

Below the cloudy skies and swooping helicopters, a nearly hour-long delay for the Formula 2 Florida Championship races at the fourth annual Bradenton Area River Regatta took place.

But the people who lined the Green Bridge and stood along the Riverwalk were rewarded for their patience as Lee Daniel cranked out a dominating victory to open the championship races along the Manatee River on Saturday.

“The boat ran real well this weekend,” Daniel said. “My daddy (crew chief Billy) has been working on my boat and we had a good year last year, so we’re coming off that. Everything just ran well (Saturday).”

Race officials said the long delay was caused by the requirement to have crews in place for the race and the small floating dock set as well as only having one pontoon boat for transport.
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The delay didn’t deter Daniel, who claimed his second consecutive victory in the Bradenton race.

“I get rambunctious,” Daniel said of the delay. “I said, ‘What’s going on? What’s going on?’ Everybody said, ‘Just calm down. It’s going to be all right.’ So yeah, I do get a little rambunctious and ready to go once you sit out there for so long.”

Last year’s event was marked with a stop in action during the 11th lap when two-time defending champion Ashton Rinker’s boat stalled out.

Daniel used a patient approach to win wire-to-wire in 2017.

On Saturday, he repeated his pole-to-pole performance, though he executed the same strategy from the previous season to open defense of his American Powerboat Association Superleague F-2 title.

Daniel finished as the points winner and is off to the best start after he bested Jeff Reno (second place) and Rinker (third) with a time of 16 minutes, 46.49 seconds.

Completing all 30 laps with ease, the only real challenge for Daniel after the first few laps was to avoid the slower boats as he passed them.

“You have to be patient, because they might be racing another boat and they’re not going to give you the inside,” Daniel said. “So you have to just be patient and watch what they do.”

Daniel said the Bradenton race is always one of the bigger crowds they get to compete in front of, and Saturday was no different.

Daniel, who has raced for 23 years after seeing his dad operate as a crew chief for various drivers, used that as motivation.

“It’s something else,” Daniel said about the crowd. “It’s a big race.”

Entering the first race of the 2018 season, Daniel couldn’t test his boat out during the winter months in North Augusta, S.C., which sits along the Savannah River that separates South Carolina from Georgia.

“We just go over the boat with a fine-toothed comb, and we come down here hoping it all stays together,” Daniel said.

It certainly stayed together Saturday as Daniel was barely challenged.

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