Friday, February 14: Twenty-one-years ago, a young Frenchman by the name of Cédric Deguisne burst on to the F1H2O racing scene as the second driver in the Italian Danita Racing Team alongside Dane Gert Ladefoged, Norwegian Rolf Magne Sunde and Finn Pertti Leppala, who shared the other boat.
Leppala retired from the two opening races of that season in India and Saudi Arabia and was replaced by Ladefoged in Portimão, Cagliari, Como and Shanghai, before Sunde took the reins for three of the last four races of that 10-round season in Singapore, Malaysia and Sharjah.
Deguisne was present at seven races that year in the number 12 boat and picked up his first ever championship point in Sardinia, in a year where he crashed in Shanghai and had a boat fire in Singapore. The seeds had been sown, however, for a career in the UIM F1H2O World Championship and that continues to this day with the French Maverick Racing team.
Despite only collected a single point that season - in a year where American Scott Gillman was a dominant force at the other end of the points’ tabl - Deguisne had been bitten by the F1H2O racing bug. Since 1995, he had been competing in the French S2000 Championship, finishing as runner-up that year and then taking three further podium finishes in 1997, 1998 and 2000 before winning the first of two back-to-back S3000 titles in 2002 and 2003.
The Frenchman tackled the opening two races of the 2005 season and finished sixth in Portugal but then began a 10-year sabbatical from the top echelon of single-seater canopy racing. In that period, the resident of the French town of Mâcon on the River Saône concentrated on the endurance element of the sport.
He took part in the famous Rouen 24hr race on multiple occasions, winning Class 2 in 2004 and then taking three podiums and outright victories in 2007 and 2011 in France’s premier power boat bonanza with the likes of his father and Mercury engine dealer Jean Vital Deguisne and William Colombelli in a Mercury Racing SST OptiMax 200XS-powered DAC. His father actually raced in F1H2O as well between 1985 and 1987 and scored his first point with a 10th-place finish at Chalon-sur- Saône in ‘85.
The draw of F1H2O racing tempted the Frenchman out of a form of early retirement and he made a pair of cameo appearances with Maverick Racing under the management of his father at the start of 2015. Cédric picked up points for eighth overall in Évian and then retired from the Porto-based third round of the championship. The following season, he again returned to finish in an impressive fourth overall on Lake Geneva, near Évian, and out of the points in Portimão.
Those tentative footsteps into a couple of races per year paved the way for a full-scale return to the sport at the start of 2017 with Maverick Racing and team-mates Béranger Robart and Amaury Jousseaume. Deguisne finished 15th in the Drivers’ Championship with points-scoring finishes in Portimão and Harbin and two costly retirements at the end of the season in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
He finished five of the seven races in 2018, including four inside the top 10, and picked up points for eighth overall in Sharjah the following year after failing to finish in Évian and Xiamen. Worldwide travel restrictions forced the cancellation of the 2020 season and Deguisne bounced back with team-mate Alexandre Bourgeot in 2021 to finish all three races and seal 11th in the Drivers’ Championship.
He was the model of consistency in his DAC in 2022 and finished all six Grand Prix, including five in the lower reaches of the top 10, to again finish 11th in the Drivers’ Championship. The switch to a Moore boat didn’t pay off initially and the Mâcon racer endured a disappointing season at the foot of the rankings after one non-finish – on his home event in Mâcon where he was also an integral member of the event’s organising committee - and three pointless races in Indonesia, Zhengzhou and Sharjah.
Last year, the introduction of the exciting new Sprint race format gave all the drivers more seat time in a pressure environment and more opportunities to score points. Deguisne finished fourth in his Sprint race on the Yellow River in Zhengzhou and picked up 26 points during the course of the season to finish 14th in the Drivers’ Championship.
Now a veteran of 51 race starts, the 52-year-old could well start challenging for regular top 10 finishes in the 2025 UIM F1H2O World Championship. He and Bourgeot have both shown that Maverick Racing’s Moore package is competitive and reliable.
As the clock ticks down to the start of the new season in Vietnam at the start of May, Maverick Racing will be preparing its strategy for another compelling year at the pinnacle of power boating.
Deguisne explained: “There will be no big changes for this new season. Alexandre and myself are confirmed in the starting positions and Béranger Robart will be our reserve driver. The team is mainly working on engine development and it seems we will have some new circuits this year. So, we will make preparations on data and propellers. However, the bulk of the work is being done on 2026 preparations with a new boat for the Mercury 360 APX. We will do the first tests in July.”
