Clive Butler and Sammy Grima onboard El Diablo emerge outright winners of the first race for the 2022 Enemed Voomquest UIM V2 World Championship which took place in St Paul’s Bay Malta.

Back in 2019 the pair won the championship despite having a bad start due to missing a turn buoy at the opening race. However, they made up for that with several consecutive wins, the last one being in Marina di Ragusa which sealed that year’s championship title.

Today was a superb start to our championship title defence and we are very much looking forward to the second race. All teams will now be on full throttle to do their best and improve their performance, however at the end of the day, the most important thing is to race.

Runners up Team Freccia Blu had started from pole position but were quickly past by El Diablo even so they were still optimistic about the weekend.

Following their visit to the podium Beppe Debono said

A big thanks to my super team, well done to all competitors and thumbs up to the organisers for creating a fantastic village. My team will try it’s best, but it will be a tough year against the new Mercury 300R V8 which produced 340hp on the dyno yesterday against our 314 hp from our previous model.

Earlier in the day Element Racing Team’s sixteen-year-old Celine Farrugia, the niece of Aaron Ciantar, founder of the championship, skilfully edged her way through some tough competition to take the first chequered flag of the weekend in the Cyber class.

Photos Alex Buttigieg/Voomquest