Round 3 of the 2022 UIM F2 World Championship will take place in Ribadouro, Portugal this weekend with 17 competitors officially entered.
Team Abu Dhabi’s Mansoor Al Mansoori goes in to the event with a tree point lead over Germany’s Stefan Hagin.
Sami Seliö is third in the championship with 22 points, ten behind Hagin.
from F2Worldchamp FB :
So Seliö So Close.
Currently sitting in third place in the UIM F2 World Championships is the Sharjah Team racer Sami Seliö, now heading into the penultimate round of this year’s championship he is looking to move closer to that top spot.“To be honest we hadn’t planned to race in Portugal” Seliö said. “Then we looked at the points table following the round in Lithuania and saw that I was third overall. So, I said OK, let’s go because it’s good for Sharjah International Marine Sports Club and it’s good for team moral. These two rounds will probably be my last in F2 because next year we will introduce a local Sharjah racer and he will race in this championship.”
With a ten-point breathing space separating Seliö and the Norwegian racer Tobias Munthe-Kaas back in fourth, he now feels comfortable enough to chase down Stefan Hagin who is just ahead of him and someone that he beat at the last round held in Kupiškis, Lithuania.
‘Hagin is a very experienced driver who has one of the new fast DAC hulls, so for sure it’s not going to be easy. We both had engine issues in Kupiškis so anything can happen but that’s racing.”
During that Lithuanian Grand Prix Seliö had struggled to get off the start line and immediately knew he had a problem. Fortunately for him there was a rolling restart following an incident involving Johan Österberg and Bimba Sjöholm, which meant he could quickly reclaim the positions he had dropped. Back in their workshop they discovered that some of the fuel injectors were not working properly.
“Big time surprise that I managed to finish on the podium with an engine that wasn’t working one hundred per cent” commented Seliö.
“F2 is on the limit right now, it’s so tight but for sure the podium is our target.”
The Sharjah Team have one more test session to complete before they make their way to the penultimate round of this year’s championship which takes place on September 10-11 in Ribadouro Baião on the Douro River about seventy kilometres east of the city of Porto.
Seliö had the pleasure of meeting up with Brock Cohen and his Australian team who have based themselves in Portugal before Cohen will make his UIM F2 World Championship debut this weekend.
“They have been super busy since they arrived in Portugal. They are well prepared and the boat looks good. It’s really great to see them as now we have drivers from the US and Australia which will raise the profile on a true world-wide scale.”
Technical Scrutineering gets under way for the team on Friday 9 September before the seventeen drivers get the opportunity of Free Practice the following morning.
| Driver | Boat # | Team | Country | Poland | Lithuania | Portugal | Portugal | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mansoor Al Mansoori | 36 | Team Abu Dhabi | UAE | 15 | 20 | 35 | ||
| Stefan Hagin | 19 | Rowe/RPM Powerboat | GER | 20 | 12 | 32 | ||
| Sami Selio | 17 | Sharjah Team | UAE | 7 | 15 | 22 | ||
| Tobias Munthe-Kaas | 77 | Stromoy Racing F2 | NOR | 12 | 0 | 12 | ||
| Edgaras Riabko | 41 | F2 Hegelmann LT | LTU | 4 | 7 | 11 | ||
| Giacomo Sacchi | 74 | Giacomo Sacchi | MON | 9 | DSQ | 9 | ||
| Rashed Al Qemzi | 1 | Team Abu Dhabi | UAE | DSQ | 9 | 9 | ||
| Nikita lijcs | 71 | LTU | 1 | 5 | 6 | |||
| Marszalek Bartlomiej | 23 | Strømøy Racing | POL | 2 | 4 | 6 | ||
| Duarte Benavente | 45 | F1 Atlantic Team | POR | 5 | 5 | |||
| Brent Dillard | 8 | JRM Racing | USA | 3 | 3 | |||
| Colin Jelf | 4 | Jelf Racing | GBR | DNS | 3 | 3 | ||
| Owen Jelf | 3 | Owen Jelf Racing | GBR | 2 | 2 | |||
| Mette Bjerknes | 9 | JRM Racing | GBR | 1 | 1 | |||
| Johan Österberg | 2 | Team AJO | SWE | |||||
| Uvis Slakteris | 51 | Riga Team | LTU | |||||
| Sam Whittle | 30 | Team Powertech | GBR | |||||
| Fabrice Boulier | 33 | Tovax Golf Racing | FRA | |||||
| Bimba Sjöholm | 11 | Bimba Racing | SWE | |||||
| Peter Morin | 8 | China Team | FRA | DNF | ||||
| Frode Sundsdal | 7 | TheRaceFactory | NOR | DNS |
