The Boats
Weighing in at around 5 tonnes, each of the Class 1 fleet is approximately 13-14m in length and 3.5m wide. The boats are built using composite materials. Over the years, safety has become a key concern and today's Class 1 boats are without doubt the safest they have ever been. The quest for speed has produced boats, engines and transmission systems which are inevitably more sophisticated and the use Epoxy Carbon Fibre combined with PVC to make it lighter have proved to be safer. It takes an average of about four months to build one boat with the longest time taken to make the mould.
The Engine
Most boats run petrol engines with the Italian Lamborghini 8.2litre, V12 the preferred power plant of many of the teams. The Victory Team run their own Victory V12 (based on the Lamborghini V12 but with a few tweaks here and there). There is also the Mercury engines, a 9.2 litre, that are used by some teams with an original 1075 hp
http://www.class-1.com
