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Spirit of Norway will be under pressure
Defending Class One world champions Spirit of Norway are certain to have a handful of boats on their tail as well as the pressure of being champions when the opening round of the 2007 WPPA Class One World Powerboat Championship takes off here tomorrow.
- By Alaric Gomes, Staff Reporter
- Published: 00:00 June 9, 2007
Athens, Greece: Defending Class One world champions Spirit of Norway are certain to have a handful of boats on their tail as well as the pressure of being champions when the opening round of the 2007 WPPA Class One World Powerboat Championship takes off here tomorrow.
Though the actual race to decide the winner of the Greek Grand Prix will be held tomorrow at the Palaio Faliro-Athens port, the warm up will be exemplified when the Pole Position run is conducted today. Eleven boats are in the fray this year - the first time ever that the World Professional Powerboat Association (WPPA) is conducting the championship - with another boat expected to join in midway through the season.
As the defending champions, Spirit of Norway know they are the hot favourites as the season gets under way. And they certainly feel the pressure too.
"There is always a bit of pressure at the start of each season," Spirit of Norway throttleman Steve Curtis told Gulf News.
"But we want to look at this as just another season, just like we do each year. We've been having an epic run so far for the past few years and I only hope this luck does not run out."
Given a superior set-up much through the past five years when they went on to win the world titles, Spirit of Norway has not had too much to do during the lean winter months of testing.
Massive improvement
"There have been some minor changes done during the winter and we now wait to see what sort of result we can expect during the first race this week," Curtis said. And to ease a certain amount of pressure, Spirit of Norway has fielded a second boat this season with youngsters Tom Barry-Cotter and Pal Virik Nilsen as the combination.
"The second boat is with a V8 engine and we hope to see a massive improvement in this boat as the season progresses," he said. Spirit of Norway's eternal challengers will be the men in blue from Dubai - Victory 7 with Ahmad Al Suwaidi and Nader Bin Hindi and Victory 77 with Aref Al Zafeen and Jean Marc Sanchez.
Top challengers
"It is now only a matter of time when we will know what sort of season we can expect," said Al Suwaidi.
"We have put in a lot of hard work and we expect this to pay off for sure," chipped in Sanchez.
The two boats from Qatar are also among the top challengers. Qatar 96 with Shaikh Hassan Bin Jaber Al Thani and Matteo Nicolini as the combination want to go further than what they did last season when they stood third in the overall standings. "The three stops during races undid all our efforts," lamented throttleman Nicolini.
"But for this season, most of the work is done and now it is only a matter of going out there and giving it our best shot," Nicolini said. But the forerunners would do well to remember that boats such as Jotun, Negotiator, Foresti & Suardi and SevenEleven are also capable of running a strong race.
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