Round 3 of the 2026 IHRA Offshore Powerboat Championship drew more than 80 boats to Florida's Space Coast, a two-time world champion to the shoreline, and a Pro Class 1 rollover that kept people talking long after the engines went quiet.
Cocoa Beach has a well-earned reputation for testing offshore teams, and Port Canaveral delivered on that across 15 to 17 May. The largest registered field of the 2026 IHRA season gathered for what became the round where the championship started to define itself. More than 80 boats signed on across all classes, with Superstock alone exceeding 20 entries, the biggest single-class starting grid of any round to date. A course repositioned beside the pier this year put spectators in close proximity to the action, giving those on shore an unobstructed view as the Atlantic tossed boat after boat into the air and made every throttle call a high-stakes one.
Brittany Force, the two-time NHRA Top Fuel World Champion and Monster Energy athlete, attended across Friday and Saturday. Her profile sits well beyond the offshore world, and her presence was a clear signal from the series that it was pushing for a wider audience heading into the back half of the season.
Friday set the tone with a Boat Parade along the Cocoa Beach shoreline before a Block Party took over Downtown Cocoa Beach from 5pm. Monster Energy/M-CON, the championship-leading Pro Class 1 team, was among those mixing with fans and fellow competitors at the Block Party ahead of Saturday's qualifying sessions.
Closed-course testing opened Saturday morning before combined qualifying for Pro Class 1, Super Cat, Factory Stock, and Superstock ran from 11am through to 1:15pm. From the first runs, the conditions made themselves the story. Boats launched clear of the surface approaching turns and through the choppier stretches beside the pier, the sea state quickly separating well-sorted setups from those that were not.
Three bracket heats followed through the afternoon. Classes 600 and 700 ran first, then Classes 400 and 500, before Classes 200, 300, and Cat 300 shared the final session alongside Pro Class 1 Race 1.
The Class 600 and 700 heat delivered the close side-by-side action the bracket format is designed to produce, though trouble was never far away. Ultimate Boat Racing (#602) ran into difficulty during the Class 600 heat, a second successive difficult round for the team. Club Car Wash (S-45) was again taking on water before the start, making it three consecutive rounds in which the Superstock squad had been unable to reach the line.
Class 400 gave the crowd its own share of spectacle, boats regularly lifting from the surface through the faster passages and keeping the grandstand entertained throughout.
LWR Lake Wiley Racing (#F-44) made their return at Cocoa Beach. Throttleman Garrett Coonrod, who had described the team's New Orleans blowover as something they would never forget, arrived alongside Dirt Legal Velocity driver Brad Christopher with straightforward intent: they had come to fight for the lead, and a rollover was not going to change that. Dirt Legal Velocity Factory Racing (#789), a consistent points scorer through the opening two rounds, arrived with the same mindset.
Pro Class 1 produced the defining moments of the weekend across its two races. MTI/GC Racing (#32) was caught taking serious air during Saturday's Race 1, a sharp reminder of the physical punishment that rough water inflicts across extended lap counts. Willie Cabeza had spoken before New Orleans about exactly that kind of toll, and Cocoa Beach illustrated his point without any need for further explanation.
Sunday's Race 2 brought the most serious incident of the round. XINSURANCE North (#11) rolled during the Pro Class 1 race, with both JJ Turk and Nick Buis confirmed safe afterwards. It was the third successive round in which the pairing had been caught up in a significant incident. At St. Petersburg they had suffered a violent rollover, made rapid repairs, and lined up again at New Orleans. At Cocoa Beach, it happened once more.
Turk explained the sequence afterwards with little embellishment. The team had been in contention for the lead when a wave arrived at precisely the wrong moment, the wind and sea state combining against them in a section of the course that offered no margin. "You're jumping into the face of the wave, and then you have the wind blowing, so once you're standing up, grabs, you tilt out, boom," he said. Both crew exited the boat quickly and walked away unhurt.
Across both days, the Pro Class 1 field as a whole produced what many who were there described as the wildest racing of the 2026 season, with boats spending significant time off the water on the rougher stretches of the pier-side course. Championship leaders Myrick Coil and Tyler Miller of Monster Energy/M-CON (#6) brought a perfect record to Cocoa Beach from the opening two rounds, four wins from four races and a 39-point lead in the standings. Official results from the round are pending confirmation.
Superstock's grid of more than 20 boats was the largest the class had seen at any point in the season. The class runs on a standardised platform built around twin Mercury Racing 300 ROS engines and a UIM ISRA approved safety canopy, keeping the competitive emphasis on setup quality, race strategy, and reading the conditions. Cameron Turk and throttleman Owen Buis of XINSURANCE (S-74) spoke to what that standardisation means in competition: "Superstock is any cat from 28 to 32 foot and they all have to have a UIM ISRA approved safety canopy running twin 300 ROS Mercurys. So we all have to weigh around the same, which makes the class even and we have very tight racing." With the Cocoa Beach field swelling past 20 entries, Turk was direct in calling it the most competitive Superstock grid assembled so far.
Owen Buis carried a dual programme at Cocoa Beach, also throttling for Clouatre Cartel Racing in Mod Vee. Clouatre had won at New Orleans and sat second in the Mod Vee championship standings, so Buis arrived carrying momentum in two classes at once.
Super Vee and Extreme returned to the card at Cocoa Beach, with the combined Race 8 slot scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Chris McAwee made the journey south with the 499 BMOAR Team / Burning Man Offshore from Niles, Michigan, a trip he put at 19 hours. The Knucklehead boat (#20) also travelled down from St. Clair, Michigan, two Midwest programmes completing the long haul to Florida. The pier-side configuration added its own extra dimension for both teams. "Usually we have some big water here, so it'll be a good, exciting event," McAwee said before tech inspection.
Official results from the Thunder on Cocoa Beach are pending confirmation from the IHRA.
