Dubai: The Dubai-based Victory Team aim to seal their first points of the season as they continue their two-pronged attack at the second round of the 2017 UIM F1H2O World Championship in Evian, France, next weekend.
The 21st Grand Prix of France, second round of the championship, will be run on the idyllic Spa Resort of Evian-Les-Bains on the southern shore of Lac Leman, Europe’s highest alpine lake, on July 1-2.
Alex Carella was the only driver representing teams from the UAE who ended in the points as the Italian picked up nine points at the season-opening Grand Prix of Portugal in Algarve in April.
However, none of the other four — Victory Team’s Ahmad Al Hameli and Shaun Torrente and Carella’s Team Abu Dhabi teammates Thani and Rashid Al Qamzi — even managed to finish the race in Portugal.
Team Abu Dhabi is the only UAE team with points so far — the nine earned from Carella’s fourth place finish in Portugal.
“Our task is cut out when we travel to France. We need the points and along with it the right to show our class as world leaders in powerboat racing,” Huraiz Bin Huraiz, Chairman, Board of Directors, Victory Team told Gulf News.
“We were unlucky in Portugal, and hopefully, these results are behind us and we can look forward to making a strong impact in France,” he said.
Bin Huraiz will be travelling to France along with board members Mohammad Al Mutaiwe’e and Nasser Al Sha’ali on Thursday [June 29].
Defending three-time World F1 Champion Philippe Chiappe went on to win maximum points in the Algarve leaving Sami Selio in second while local driver Duarte Benavente came in third to complete the podium. Chiappe is at the top of the standings with 20 points, followed by Selio with 15, Benavente with 12 and Carella and Bartek Marszalek with nine and seven each.
However, the challenges for the 19 drivers from 12 countries who have raced in Evian in the last two years will be aware of the unpredictability of the weather accompanied with deceptive rolling waves and the often delayed wake due to the busy ferry traffic on the lake.
In Portugal, the Victory Team duo did well at the onset with Torrente leading the early part of the race before his engine caved in, while Al Hameli could not even start the race despite being second in the Pole Position run. It was later found that teams had suffered engine problems due to the quality of fuel supplied by race organisers.
The Victory Team has since then spent a major part of summer testing their engines for better fuel compatibility, and their two drivers made a special trip last week to check out their boats in Italy. “Whatever the conditions in Evian, our aim is to go and win the first and second places. We had a strong start in Portugal, but we could not see the race through perhaps due to bad luck and unfortunate incidents despite Shaun [Torrente] leading from the start for nearly one-fifth of the race,” Bin Huraiz said.
“Since our experience in Portugal we have done whatever we can to have a better reliability on engines and boats. We have a fantastic technical expertise to back us up further so that we can return will full points and put our campaign back on trail,” he insisted.
“Since Portugal, we have done whatever we could to ensure we reach our goal starting from Evian. It is the start of the season and any team should be prepared for such problems to creep in. I believe we have the all-round expertise to take such changes in our stride and be where we have to be as the season progresses,” Bin Huraiz added.
