Fazza will be team to beat in Powerboat Championships

Dubai: Twelve-time world champions Fazza will lead a pack of nine boats in the opening heat of the 2013 UIM Class One Powerboat Championships being held at the bustling city port of Sanya on the southernmost point of Hainan Island this weekend (March 28-30).

The first race of the season marks the golden jubilee for Class One racing as it is exactly 50 years after American Jim Wynne won the first UIM-sanctioned World Drivers’ Championship in 1964.

The defending world, Middle East and Edox Pole Position Champions Arif Saif Al Zafein and Mohammad Al Merri are being tipped as favourites to win another title in the nine-strong fleet as the Dubai-based Victory Team celebrates its own impressive landmark of decades in the sport.

After two decades of first lifting their first world championship way back in 1993, Victory Team’s title-holders will be the pair to beat. They will be looking to carry on where they left off in 2012 as they go in search of the team’s 13th world crown and to add to their 93 wins from 168 starts.

Rashid Al Tayer and Majid Al Mansouri in the Team Abu Dhabi boat head the list of challengers as they seek to go one better than their second-place finish last season. Although slightly overshadowed by their illustrious neighbours, Al Tayer and Al Mansouri have been an exciting partnership which has grown in stature since they teamed up for the first time in 2011.

The 5.66Nm course has been set along the Sanya River and past the man-made Phoenix Island on Sanya Bay.