Teams
and competitors in the UIM-WPPA Class 1 World Powerboat Championship
are poised to renew rivalries in the Qatar Marine Festival Grand Prix on
Saturday, 25 April the first race of the season and the eleventh race
to be held in the Qatari Capital City of Doha in eight years.
Victory
want a first Grand Slam, Qatar want a first World title and all their
rivals want a piece of the action. Class 1 looks set for a captivating
and possibly unpredictable season.
Ten boats
will line up for the 21-lap, 96.45Nm Qatar Marine Festival Grand Prix;
but with the introduction of new rules governing the use of electronics,
limited propeller choice, new teams and a handful of untried
driver-pairings, the outcome of the season-opener is hard to predict.
Dubai’s
Victory Team, the defending World, Middle East and Edox Pole Position
Champions, will start amongst the favourites for race honours and have
rolled out three World Champions as they launch their bid to retain
their crowns and hunt down a fourth win in Qatari waters as they aim for
that elusive grand slam of all four titles in a season only ever
achieved by Spirit of Norway in 2003, and described by Victory’s General
Manager, Gianfranco Venturelli, as ‘mission impossible’. Defending
Champion, Nadir Bin Hendi, is joined in last year’s winning boat now
named Fazza 3 by the 2007 World and European Champion, Arif Al Zafeen,
and will be looking to repeat their 2008 win in Doha, whilst his former
partner, Jean-Marc Sanchez, is once again called on by the team’s
hierarchy to draw on all his experience and steer another rookie
Mohammad Al Mehairi through his first season, running in Victory 1.
The
Qatar Team pose the greatest threat to Victory’s aspirations and Sheikh
Hassan Bin Jabor Al-Thani is in absolutely no doubt that his team can
win the World title and can kick-start their season-long campaign with a
win on home waters. Sheikh Hassan, still looking for his first win in
Doha, again lines up with former World Champion Steve Curtis a
five-times winner in Qatar and will more than likely run the repaired
and modified Qatar 96 with Skema V12s, whilst team-mates Matteo Nicolini
and Abdullah Al-Sulaiti, who still hold the in-house bragging rights
after taking the team’s only win in 2008 and fancy their chances of
title glory this season, line up in the Sterling V8-powered Qatar 95,
with Al-Sulaiti looking for his second win in front of a partisan crowd.
The
bid to oust the sport’s two titans and upset the form book, is headed
by the defending European Champion, Jorn Tandberg, who reforms his
winning partnership with fellow Norwegian, Christian Zaborowski, running
the Mercury-Class 1, V8-powered scarlet MTI, Welmax.
Maritimo
Australia is the third team fielding a two-boat line-up and will be
hoping to repeat the success that team owner, Bill Barry-Cotter and
Peter McGrath enjoyed in Doha, when they took their maiden Class 1 win
at the first Grand Prix held in Qatar in 2002. Twenty-one-year-old, Tom
Barry-Cotter and Pal Virik Nilsen form the youngest partnership in Class
1, but can boast the most races and cockpit time together of any
driver-throttleman combination in the Championship, and will run their
new hull, Maritimo 11, with the straight-talking New Zealander, Peter
McGrath, joined by Italian, Giorgio Manuzzi, in Maritimo 12, the boat
the team debuted in Dubai last season both outfits opting to run
Maritimo Performance V8 power-plants.
Throughout
the fleet, new driver-combinations dominate, adding to the
unpredictability of the race outcome; throttleman, Giampaolo Montavoci
and Francesco Pansini, back racing in Class 1 after a 13-year absence,
team up for the first time in Foresti & Suardi- Roscioli Hotels.
Nicola
Giorgi, who grabbed his first Class 1 podium in the penultimate race in
Dubai last year, will be looking to build on that success and is joined
in the Giorgi V12-powered Giorgioffshore by the team’s test-driver
Riccardo Calugi, making his Class 1 debut, with the experienced Giovanni
Carpitella partnering relative newcomer, Mohammed Abdelkader Ahmed, in
Spirit of Spain in which Carpitella raced last year, taking an
impressive fourth in the final race of the season.
The
Qatar Marine Festival Grand Prix weekend kicks off with a two-hour
official practice session on Thursday afternoon (23 April), followed by a
second practice session on Friday morning ahead of the Edox Pole
Position official qualifying session in the afternoon. A final practice
session on Saturday morning precedes the 96.45Nm Qatar Marine Festival
Grand Prix, run on the notoriously tricky Doha Bay circuit which has
seen some spectacular racing and incidents over the years consisting of
one 5.15Nm start lap, 18 race laps of 4.5Nm and two compulsory 5.15Nm
long laps.
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