Motorsports gun drives Yamaha PWCs

Jamie Whincup and his hot Yammie PWC fleet

Four-times Bathurst winner and quadruple V8 Supercars champion, aptly named Jamie Whincup, is arguably Australia’s fastest ambassador on land but now he's vying for the title at sea, too.

Leading the the V8 Supercars title chase for 2013, the speed demon has come from Yammie motorbikes to race cars but he's never lost his passion for driving PWCs (personal water craft) for thrills in the surf.

On the track, the champion unleashes around 650hp rev-limited to 750rpm in a race car built by Triple Eight Race Engineering. But while Jamie has moved seamlessly between Fords and Holdens to win his land titles, when he wants to get the blood rushing on the water he launches one of his three Yamaha PWCs -- a super-comfortable tourer, a racing-inspired sports model, or a radical freestyle stunt machine.

That’s why Yamaha has branded the man who recurrently leads the V8 Supercars title chase for 2013 -- "Yamaha ambassador."

Evidently, Jamie's relationship with Yamaha began in his mid-teens when he saved $2500 to buy a second-hand WR250 off-road motorcycle that he subsequently owned for a couple of years “hooking around the bush” at King Lake, east of Melbourne.

He then upgraded to a Yamaha YZ250 for his off-road riding before moving to the Gold Coast to advance his motorsport career.

“On the Gold Coast, the surf was much closer than the bush -- just 10 minutes away -- so I bought a Yamaha Superjet Waverunner,” Jamie explains.

“I had the Superjet for about three years. I convinced my friends to get them as well -- there were about five or six of us with them at one time,” he adds.

One of those other Yamaha Superjet riders was Paul Dumbrell who will team up with Jamie for the Bathurst endurance race this year.

Jamie’s fleet of Yamaha PWCs now comprises an FX SHO three-seater Waverunner with touring features, such as cruise control, a no-wake function and bow-trim control for maximum ride comfort; a race-bred ultra-sharp-handling FZR two seater that uses the same supercharged 1812cc engine; and the stand-up and freestyle-riding Superjet that's ideal for radical and trick manoeuvres.

“I use my Waverunners as a training tool,” Jamie said. “We’re massively limited about how many days we can drive the race car so I use my Yamahas to keep my brain sharp.”

“My usual trip is around South Stradbroke Island. I head out from my place at Hope Island, head down the Broadwater and out the Southport Seaway and then up along the eastern side of the island. I come back through the Jumpinpin Bar at the northern end of the island and then back down the Broadwater.

“It’s about a two-hour ride including messing around and jumping a few waves.”

“After about an hour’s hard riding, my body starts to feel a little fatigued and my brain starts to fatigue. I find myself making little mistakes -- hitting a wave at slightly the wrong angle, maybe holding the throttle open while I’m in the air. It’s great training for concentration.”

Other days, Jamie says he likes taking his girlfriend on the back of a Waverunner and riding down behind Marina Mirage on the Southport Spit. He pulls up near the trawlers to grab a kilo of prawns, rides over to a quiet beach, peels the prawns and eats them. "It’s fantastic.”

“Sometimes we’ll get dressed in casual clothes and ride up to a fantastic little pub up at Jacobs Well. That’s about 20 minutes from home, so we’ll moor up at the dock, go in and have a counter meal and then cruise home without even getting wet.

“The biggest gain that you’ve got with Yamaha is reliability -- without a doubt,” Jamie enthuses. “Every model that Yamaha brings out is a proven product. It’s so important -- I’ve got such a busy schedule [so] I can’t afford to have equipment that is going to let me down. Reliability is ultra important.”

Jamie’s Waverunners also log many miles on the road. As a barefoot waterskier and talented wakeboard rider, he welcomes the chance to return to the Albury-Wodonga reaches of the Murray River.

“I generally get three weeks off at the end of the year to catch up with family and friends, so I put my Waverunners in the back of the truck or behind whatever I’m driving down there.”

Jamie adds that another great thing about a PWC compared with a V8 Supercar is that at the end of a great day there’s only about 20 minutes cleanup washing down a Waverunner and running a chamois over it.

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Motorsports gun drives Yamaha PWCs

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