Inside SOTW: Jay Muller—For The Love Of The Game

Though most offshore powerboat racers claim to “love the sport”—and there’s nothing wrong with that—few can say they’ve shown the commitment to it that Jay Muller has for the past three decades. He’s been the throttleman for Billy Mauff and the WHM Motorsports team in Super Cat, Superboat and whatever other class they’ve been in for 16 years. The duo has captured countless checkered flags as well as numerous world and national championships running a state-of-the art 40-foot Skater Powerboats catamaran with an enclosed cockpit and Sterling Performance power.

Having recently turned 50 years old, Jay Muller is celebrating 33 years as an offshore powerboat racer and he’s showing no signs of slowing down.

But Muller showed his love for offshore racing when his daughter Regan, then 14, asked him to race with her in the pontoon class—yes you read that right—at of all events, Muller’s hometown Garden State race, the Lake Hopatcong Grand Prix, in 2018.

Regan Muller drove and, of course, they won. Now she’s 16 and wants to start racing a single outboard-powered boat in Class 7 like her older brothers, Jason, 21, Chase, 20, and Jax, 18.

Jay Muller turned 50 on August 28, and, as he has done for many years, he was test running his 25-foot Martini V-bottom, Wicked, near his home in Lake Hopatcong when it overheated. He took it back to his shop, pulled the engine and changed the ring gear.

“I enjoy working on the boat,” he said. “I pulled the engine and changed the gear myself. You want to get it done, you get it done.”

Since WHM Motorsports wasn’t competing that weekend, he raced in Class 6 in Wicked and then jumped in another boat to run in Class 7.

Growing up boating on the Jersey Shore, Muller learned to run his father’s 38-foot Cigarette Top Gun, Tropic Heat. His dad, Bob Muller, would give him $100 (remember this was 37 years ago) and tell his then 13-year-old son to go fill up the boat.

“All of our neighbors had high-performance boats,” Jay Muller said. “I learned how to dock boats and I learned how to run a boat.”

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