How The Fastest Boat At Lake Of The Ozarks Vanished... And Then Came Roaring Back

The 2025 Shootout delivered high boat racing drama... and a boat that hadn't been seen on Lake of the Ozarks for more than a decade.

The Mystic catamaran formerly known as Spirit of Qatar — racing in 2025 as Darana Hybrid Electro-Mechanical Solutions — was no stranger to the Lake. In 2014, back when the Shootout was held on the main channel in front of Captain Ron's, the Mystic shocked racing fans with its speed.

In its first run that day, the boat's parachutes were unintentionally deployed partway down the course. Driving team Steve Curtis and Sheikh Hassan bin Jabor Al-Thani throttled up and the 'chutes ripped off the back of the boat. It still hit 210 mph — beating what had been the Shootout record (209 mph) until 2013 when Bill Tomlinson hit 214 mph in My Way.

Early in the afternoon, with the boat repaired, Hassan and Curtis approached the starting line. A roar of engines, and then it seemed Spirit of Qatar was already crossing the finish line. The two-mile-long flotilla of spectators cheered: Sheikh Hassan and Steve Curtis had reached an unthinkable 244 mph in Spirit of Qatar.

Spirit of Qatar's team had earned the Shootout's highest honor: Top Gun, awarded to the single fastest boat at each year's race.

But after that year, everything quickly changed. Sheikh Hassan stepped down as president of the Qatar Marine Sports Federation in March 2015. The organization was renamed the Qatar Sailing and Watersports Federation, and its tunnel-boat and hydroplane racing programs were terminated.

The fastest boat at Lake of the Ozarks suddenly went off the radar.

Over the next 10 years, the ethanol-powered Mystic catamaran American Ethanol, owned by Don Onken, would stand as the unbeatable king of the hill. With John Cosker and Tony Battiato in the cockpit for most of those years, the boat proved capable of posting formidable speeds: 207 mph in 2022; 214 mph in 2023; 221 mph in 2024. And while the racing world murmured with rumors of this or that boat coming to snatch Top Gun from Onken's team, no serious challenger materialized for a decade.

Meanwhile, big changes took place at the Shootout.

In the wake of a crash in 2014 that killed Outerlimits founder Mike Fiore and another harrowing crash in 2016, the Shootout board shortened the race course to 3/4-mile.

Then in 2025, the race was moved to the Glaize Arm, with Dog Days as the new host location.

And in that new location, the former Spirit of Qatar — now renamed Darana Hybrid — came roaring back to reclaim Top Gun status.

The boat hit a stunning 242 mph on Sunday morning, Aug. 24, 2025, propelling its team into Shootout history.

A Crowded Field

After a decade of American Ethanol dominance, four boats came to the 2025 Shootout with enough muscle to win:

• American Ethanol — The reigning champion.

• Dirty Duck — It's never won Top Gun (yet). But piloted by Slug Hefner (who drove American Ethanol with Cosker in 2016) and Adam Seraphine, the boat had enough under the hood to earn it. On the first day of racing, it hit 215 mph — a faster speed than American Ethanol reached through most of its Top Gun reign — proving it had the chops to take home the trophy.

• Team Yahoo — The 36-foot open-cockpit Skater came as a dark-horse candidate, no doubt. But the boat packed major power: it hit 180 mph at the 2023 Shootout. It takes stones to rip down a race course that fast without the protection of a canopy. Die-hard Shootout fans will forever remember Greg Olson's last-minute, open-cockpit Eliminator run to swipe the Top Gun title in 2012 — his boat racing finale. 

• Darana Hybrid (short for Darana Hybrid Electro-Mechanical Solutions) — You know this one.

The 2025 Race Recap

Jamin Jones got things started on Saturday with a 185 mph run in Team Yahoo. At 11:13 a.m., it was the fastest run of the day. He held the lead for a mere 10 minutes.

At 11:23 a.m. on Saturday, Dirty Duck made its mark.

The boat's 215 mph run was a massive flex and looked like it might be enough to stand through the weekend and clinch the first Top Gun title for the boat.

Meanwhile, defending champ American Ethanol faltered. Owner Don Onken told LakeExpo the boat's new engines were having trouble getting it up on plane and it couldn't muster even a single complete run. Onken said his team hoped to install aerators on the boat, giving it a chance to compete on Sunday.

It did indeed make two runs on Sunday, but they were a far cry from what the bright-yellow boat had posted in past years: it topped out at 179 mph.

Then Steve Curtis and Darryl Cuttell pulled up to the start line in the green Darana boat. At 11:04 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 24, it was all over. They roared across the 3/4-mile track in a stunningly smooth run that hit 242 mph.

With a new course record and just 2 mph shy of tying its own all-time Shootout record, Darana was crowned 2025 Shootout Top Gun, capping off a dramatic weekend of boat racing.

A decade after vanishing from the Lake of the Ozarks racing scene, the boat came back as fast as ever, and made Shootout — and Lake of the Ozarks — history.