Dubai: Dubai’s Victory Team and Team Abu Dhabi will have their work cut out heading for the season finale at the fourth and final round after the sixth race in Xiamen was cancelled on Sunday.

Choppy conditions and strong winds forced officials to cancel the second race at the Xiamen Grand Prix in China — Round Three on the 2017 UIM XCAT World Championship — that now heads to the Mina Seyahi waters off the Dubai International Marine Club (DIMC) from November 30 to December 2.

On Sunday, winds in excess of 15 knots and choppy conditions on the water meant the course was deemed unsafe forcing organisers to instruct teams to head back to the wet pit and push the entire drama to Dubai for the final two races of the championship.

This swift turn of events now means that Team Australia’s Brett Luhrmann and Norwegian co-pilot Pal Virik-Nilsen lead the championship by a mere 11 points from Victory Team’s Salem Al Adidi and Eisa Al Ali going into the season finale.

Luhrmann and Nilsen’s Blue Roo will head to Dubai with a lead in the overall standings with 148 points, followed by Victory Team’s Al Adidi and Al Ali in second overall with 137 points, and Team Abu Dhabi’s Rashid Al Tayer and Majid Al Mansouri in third, with 116 points.

On Saturday, former five-time defending XCAT world champions Arif Al Zafein and Nader Bin Hindi had thrown open the tussle for the title with a tremendous last-gasp finish in the first race of the Xiamen Grand Prix. And now with a maximum 70 points on offer in the next two races, teams will be forced to revisit their strategies.

Giovanni Carpitella and Joakim Kumlin had done well to come in fifth on Saturday in their Miphere Xiamen boat to now nestle into fourth place overall with 104 points, while Swecat Racing’s Mikael Bengtsson and Erik Stark are in fifth with 85 points. With Al Zafein and Bin Hindi taking maximum points in the fifth race on Saturday for sixth overall with 81 points, the crown can be anyone’s heading into Dubai.

When the boats headed out on the Pacific Ocean course, the wind had picked up to well over 15 knots making the waters rough, choppy and hence dangerous for the boats. Initially, officials decided on shortening the course with a start lap followed by 12 laps with no long laps.

But as the race boats assembled and began to follow the pace cat, which stayed out on the course for an extra lap on safety grounds before the decision was taken to suspend the race and the red flag was raised. Racing was cancelled soon afterwards.