Luis Martins hopes to pick up where he and co-pilot Nick Imprescia left off when they compete in the St Clair River Classic in Michigan on Sunday.

The pair reached another milestone after securing their first win together at the Shootout Offshore Lake of Ozarks in Missouri last month in their 32ft twin-engined catamaran, Nuff Said, and are now keen to build on that success.

“We’re going to go into it like we went into the previous; trying to compete and do well,” driver Martins told The Royal Gazette.

“It feels good to get back to race weekend again, confidence is high and we’re ready to race and compete.

“We are starting from zero again, fighting to qualify and do well and then go from there. We want to race hard and fight for the front, and I’m expecting everybody to do the same.

“It’s unchartered waters for us as we haven’t been there before. I’m expecting the waters to be something like Lake Ozarks, but things can change.”

Martins and Imprescia are presently fourth in the newly rebranded Super Stock National Championship, 38 points adrift of leaders and fellow local team, Team Bermuda, with three races reaming in the season series.

Team Bermuda, who hold an eleven point advantage over second place Allied/STR Powerboats, are also competing at the venue for the first time.

“St Clair is a new venue for us so not sure what to expect except it will be calm,” boat owner and throttle man Steven Bridges said.

“Need a good result to keep the points in our favour so will do our best to be in the top five.

“A lot of guys have been testing and making changes to their boat set up, so we expect it to be a tough weekend.

“It’s a small lake as well so the track will be tight and make for an interesting race with 10 to 12 boats but as always we will do our best and hope for a podium finish.”

Bridges and driver David Selley have been the most consistent team on the circuit so far this season having won the St Petersburg Grand Prix and Thunder at Cocoa Beach and finished second at the New Orleans Grand Prix and Shootout Offshore on Lake of Ozarks.

Much has changed since the last race day with organisers International Hot Rod Association pulling the plug on the IHRA Offshore Series Championship for reasons they have yet to disclose.

However, the teams in the Super Stock class have agreed to complete the original seven points races, which now fall under the auspices of the Offshore Powerboat Association and Race World Offshore.

“IHRA have shut down their programme so we’ve now added a few extra races to our schedule to complete the seven points race days,” Martins said.

“At the beginning of the season our class chose to do seven races as our national points and the total of those seven races would be the national champion.

“But because of IHRA closing down before we got to those seven races we’ve had to add a few extra races to our schedule which would be St Clair, Michigan and Clearwater, Florida. That’s going to be the final points race and then it’s the World Championship in Key West, Florida.”

To help offset costs for teams to compete in the revised schedule, the entry fee has been waived, while prize money provided by the IHRA will still be up for grabs in the remaining races.

“The IHRA had the money up front and have put some monies forward for us to come to these venues,” Martins said.

“These other venues, because we weren’t originally going to them, have asked us to come to them and have assisted us with dropping entry fees and also putting up some prize money as well.”

Teams will also carry their points accumulated from the four races completed in the original IHRA Offshore Series Championship forward.