Andrew Tate, who won at Seafair as a rookie last year, seeks an encore Sunday

Before Andrew Tate became the first rookie to win at Seafair in 60 years, the U-9 Les Schwab Tires boat wasn’t on the radar of the vast majority of unlimited-hydroplane fans.
By Nathan Joyce

Seafair was a coming-out party last year for the U-9 Les Schwab Tires and its rookie driver, Andrew Tate.
Before Tate became the first rookie to win at Seafair in 60 years, the white boat wasn’t on the radar of the vast majority of unlimited-hydroplane fans.

“I think we surprised the entire boat-racing world with that one,” Tate said while preparing to repeat as champion of the Albert Lee Appliance Cup at Seafair.

But it was the culmination of more than five years of work by boat owners Mike and Lori Jones to get their boat from also-ran to contender.

Let’s start with Tate. Jones jokes that he is the result of his team’s recruitment program. Jones and crew chief Jeff Campbell noticed Tate after a strong performance at an outboard national championship three years ago in Moses Lake.

“You’re always looking for a kid in outboards and inboards that you can just see has that extra talent,” said Jones, comparing it to scouting in football or baseball.
Boat racing being a tight community, Jones and Campbell were already familiar with the Tate family. Andrew’s father, Mark Tate, was a decorated unlimited-hydroplane driver in the 1990s.

Tate began his apprenticeship with the team shortly after, showing up at the season-ending Bayfair race in San Diego. The next season, he got some laps in the boat during preseason testing in the Tri-Cities. Last year, the job was his.

It was a slow start. In the season opener in Madison, Ind., Tate was the “trailer” boat, which means he had to start outside and behind the fleet in the final as a sort of rookie initiation. The next race, in the Tri-Cities, a broken propeller kept Tate in the pits.

But Jones knew the boat would be competitive.

Seafair was the next week. That’s when Tate slipped inside Jimmy Shane, took the advantageous inside lane and flew to the title, the first for a rookie since Jim Ranger in the My Gypsy in 1956.

He’s followed that up with a second-place finish in San Diego last year and a win in Madison this year in a two-boat shootout against Shane, the four-time defending national champion who drives the U-1 HomeStreet Bank. Last week, in the Tri-Cities, he was the top qualifier and won three heats before taking fourth in the final.
“He’s very good,” Jones said. “He’s very good. He’s just a nice young man.”

If you talk to most drivers walking around Stan Sayres Pits, they have a similar story. Grew up in a family of boat racers, started young and raced in all sorts of boat classes. That’s only half of Tate’s story.
He started boat racing at 11, as he and his younger brother, Brent, got started at the same time. While spring and summer were spent boat racing, fall and winter were spent playing hockey. The Detroit area, where Tate grew up, is a hotbed of hockey talent, including the Tates.

Andrew, 27, played forward and was good enough to play NCAA Division III hockey at Curry College outside of Boston for a year. His brother was a bit better, dropped boat racing and played Division I hockey at Bowling Green and played beyond college before hanging it up recently.
“I think we had a mutual agreement between me and the sport. It kind of passed me by,” Tate said of his hockey days. “I was spending my summers playing with boats instead of training like I should have.”
Mark Tate said Brent was actually a better driver in the early days. Andrew, a fourth-generation boat racer, stuck with racing and became one of the top drivers in the Midwest, competing in the Grand Prix class.
And now he’s one of the top drivers on the unlimited-hydroplane circuit. But it takes more than a driver to win. The boat also needs plenty of speed.
That’s where Jones’ several-year campaign comes in.
He’d been after the Campbell brothers for years to join his team. The Campbell brothers were key members of the Miss Budweiser team, which was one of the most dominant in the history of the sport before it disbanded in 2004.

Finally, he got them to agree to join the team for one race. That was five years ago. Now, Jeff is the crew chief and Mike does the props, wings and deck. Throw in a couple of other former Miss Bud guys on the crew, and they’ve turned the team around.
The Les Schwab Tires team, which is based in Enumclaw, likes to point out that it has the youngest driver and the oldest boat on the circuit, and that’s true. Sort of.
Jones, a veteran boat racer himself, points out that the only original part of the boat are the sponsons. The boat, which was built in 1992, has been rebuilt several times.
“I know they’ve been working their butts off every year to make that boat what it is now,” Shane said. “… We wanted that competition on the water, and we got it with the U-9.”
Saturday, Tate picked up a victory in Heat 1B after Shane was given a penalty for going under 80 mph in the prerace milling period. He was second to Shane in Heat 2B.
And Sunday, he’ll be going for his second win at Seafair, something his dad never did once.

But you won’t hear any trash talking from Tate to his old man.
“Andrew is a very, very humble person,” Mark Tate said. “I think I have as much respect for him as he does for me.”
There’s plenty to respect. Both drivers won the unlimited hydroplane rookie of the year awards. Mark is one of seven drivers to win four National High Points Championships. Andrew is contending for his first, though he’ll have to beat Shane and J. Michael Kelly in the U-12 Graham Trucking.
“He’s got a lot to learn and it shows at times,” Mark said. “The more seat time he gets, the more he’ll become a complete driver.”

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