Racing has always been a big deal for me. When I was starting out, racing was all I thought about," he said. "All I wanted to do was work on the boat, go drive the boat, or talk about driving the boat. Boat racing is something I dreamed about my whole life." Tim earned his first championship at the top level of powerboat racing in 1998 and repeated in 1999 - 2002 and 2004.

Tim won his first boat racing championship at the age of 17. He drove a Mod 50 boat to a Mod 90-class Marathon Nationals victory and world record at Lake Alford, Fla., that year. In 1990 he earned the SST - 140 championship in the Outboard Performance Craft Nationals at Kankakee, Ill. The following year he brought home another Marathon Nationals trophy, this time in the Mod U class, from Huntington, W. Va.
Before joining the Champ boat ranks full-time, Tim won four U.S. titles in the IOGP SST - 140 class in 1990, 1991, 1993 and 1994.

Running on the edge

The driver’s performance may count more in boat racing than in any other form of motorsports. Even at the top level of powerboat racing, many teams have similar technology and most boats have all the power the driver can handle. Teams struggle to find even the smallest improvements in performance. “Getting the ‘big speed’ is easy.

Finding that last one or two percent is a struggle.
You've got to get points every time you go out there. Every lap counts. Every heat counts. You can't even screw up a heat race up.

You can't have a mechanical failure, you can't have a driver failure, you can't have a crew failure,” Tim said.

"As close as everybody is running, you've also got to have some luck. With all the preparation you do, all the hard work you do, all the heat races you run, and the championship comes down to the last heat of the last event of the year, luck makes the difference," he said. "But that's part of racing."


Tim enjoys the planning and strategy involved in racing. "If you're looking for somebody who can make that boat go absolutely as fast as it can go, that's not my forte," he said. "If you want a guy to go out when there are 20 other people on the water and pick through the traffic and out-think the guys ahead of you and behind you, that's the part I like best. “I enjoy the mental aspect of it - setting the boat up for the conditions of the day, picking the right prop and the right engine set-up."

Boat racing requires a level of concentration that may be unmatched in motorsports, said Tim, who was a wrestler in high school and college and raced motorcycles before settling on boat racing. "With this type of racing, you're not really relaxed down the straightaway. You're trimming the boat constantly. You have to be 100 percent focused all the time. The unique thing about boat racing is that the course is different every single lap. It can be tough sometimes, especially when it gets right down to the wire at the end."

Tim is a personal watercraft and all-terrain-vehicle dealer in Osage Beach, Mo., at the Lake of the Ozarks. He opened Seebold Sports there in 1993. In 1998 he purchased Seebold Racing, the family race boat-building business in Fenton, Mo., from his father.

He has enough to do to keep two or three people busy, but Tim says he likes it that way. He spends part of each week at Seebold Sports, and then makes the two-hour drive to spend the rest of the week at Seebold Racing.


Tim Seebold Career Highlights

Birth Date: January 28, 1964
Home: Osage Beach, Missouri

Wife: Deb

World record holder, Mod 90 1982
Marathon Nationals champion 1982, 1990, 1991
SST 140 National champion 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
PROP Tour Formula One champion 1998, 1999
Champ Boat Series champion 2002, 2004
Second, Champ Boat Series points 2003
Second, U.S. Formula One points 1993, 1995, 2000
Third, U.S. Formula One points 2001
Mount Fuji, Japan, UIM race winner 1994
Pittsburgh Three Rivers Regatta winner 1995, 1996
Sault Ste. Marie River winner 2004
Saskatoon winner 2004
Bud Light St. Louis Grand Prix winner 2004
Roar of the Rockies winner 2004

Before the St Louis GP, Tim Seebold said he had a dream - the same one said he has had about this time every year for the last 16 years. He said he dreamed that he would wake up today and win the Bud Light St. Louis Grand Prix, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious outboard powerboat races.

He went out and did it, leading all 50 laps to join his father Bill and older brother Mike on this list of Bud Light Grand Prix winners. Bill, now retired from driving, had won the top class in St. Louis seven times and Mike has won it six times. With Tim’s victory, the Seebold family now has won their hometown race 14 times in 33 years.

The victory was the third of 2004 and 16th career victory in the Champ class for Seebold.
 

The team’s associate sponsors include Bud-Lite, Formotion Products Inc, Red Line Oil, Polaris Personal Watercraft, Rhino Linings, NGK Spark Plugs, ATL Fuel Cells, XG-ad and Safety-Kleen.