Mo­tul Mon­ster over­came the chal­lenges of a blown out­drive ear­ly last week to a fast-drop­ping oil pres­sure dur­ing Sat­ur­day's run­ning of the T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Great Race, to claimed the over­all win and topped the 130 mph class in the dar­ing dri­ve from Trinidad to the sis­ter isle of To­ba­go for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive time.

Dri­ver Joey Sabeeney said chal­lenges like those tend to make vic­to­ry sweet­er.

Mr So­lo Too, the 18-time win­ner of the event and the lone com­peti­tor to Mon­ster yes­ter­day, did not fin­ish the race as it broke down in Gas­pa­ree Is­lands and did not reach To­ba­go.

The 46-foot Skater, dri­ven by Joey Sabeeney with throt­tle­man Pe­ter Peake and nav­i­ga­tors Daniel Peake and Joshua Sabeeney in con­trol, en­tered To­ba­go wa­ters first in a fast time of one hour and 10 min­utes as they crossed the fin­ish line, which proved to be sat­is­fac­to­ry for Sabeeney (Joey) but still, a far cry from their world record time of 47 min­utes and 43 sec­onds they record­ed back 2018.

Sabeeney said he be­lieves that record will nev­er be bro­ken.

It took more than just speed though for Mo­tul Mon­ster to re­ceive the win. De­spite their fly­ing start to the race, Sabeeney said the con­di­tions were not as rough as ex­pect­ed but a fast drop­ping oil pres­sure had them un­cer­tain of whether they would fin­ish the race.

"This was a very spe­cial win, we had a cou­ple of things against us. We blew an out­drive on Mon­day while test­ing which is not some­thing that can be re­paired, but the Pol­lon­ais broth­ers, Ja­son and Scott, were very kind to lend us an out­drive off of one of their race boats as they were not rac­ing this year, and we got the boat back up and run­ning."

"Af­ter Shodo go­ing up the north coast, we start­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence low oil pres­sure and we sud­den­ly got a lit­tle smoke in the canopy which was a lit­tle scary but we man­aged to make it to To­ba­go. The oil pres­sure just kept on drop­ping and drop­ping."

"The con­di­tions in the gulf were a lit­tle chop­py. The con­di­tion in the Bo­ca was a bit calm, I was sur­prised but as we made progress up the north coast af­ter Mara­cas, the wa­ter start­ed to get rough. There was wa­ter from every an­gle, from every di­rec­tion, three feet, two feet, four feet with white caps here and there. And com­ing across the shal­lows wasn't too bad ei­ther, but at that point, we just want­ed to reach To­ba­go be­cause the oil pres­sure kept on drop­ping and we start­ed to won­der if we would make it."

Lim­it­less, the 60 mph class cam­paign­er that made it to To­ba­go first in 2021, was again the win­ner of its class, fin­ish­ing ahead of Bowen and Time­less.

Mean­while, Ex­treme Mea­sures al­so had lots to cheer about, af­ter an ac­ci­dent two weeks ago threat­ened to keep them on the side­lines.

In­stead, the team was sec­ond be­hind Ketch This, while Iron­man claimed the win in the 120mph class, be­ing the lone com­peti­tor.

Re­sults:

G1 Class: 1 Fire chief

G2 class: 1st Lo­co Xpress

60mph class: 1 Lim­it­less, 2 Bowen, 3 Time­less

70mph: 1 Ketch This, 2 Ex­treme Mea­sures

80mph: 1 Mo­bil Out­law

120mph: Iron­man

130mph: Mon­ster