John Tomlinson and Gary Ballough needed to put Team Abu Dhabi 6 on pole position to give themselves a better chance of holding off Victory 3’s Arif Saif Al-Zafeen and Nadir Bin Hendi and trying to claim the win in the last race of the UIM Class 1 World Championship on Friday afternoon.

There was quite a strong wind blowing across the Breakwater at the start of the session, however, and no one expected lap times to be on a par with the previous three days.

Ballough and Tomlinson ran one lap and recorded a time of 2min 51.415sec – some seven seconds slower than the previous day.

Zabo 91 ran a pair of consistent laps of 3min 01.923sec and 3min 02.993sec as the session reached its mid-point with the wind abating somewhat.

Victory 3 took to the water for the first time with 31 minutes remaining and produced a slam-dunk lap of 2min 45.660sec to storm into provisional pole position.

With only four minutes to run, both 3 and 6 went back on to the course and crossed the start line of their last qualifying lap with just 51 and 14 seconds remaining of the session, respectively.

It was to no avail, however, as Ballough and Tomlinson could only improve slightly with a 2min 50.472sec lap.

Oil cooler issues had ruined Aquasport 99’s run in race two on Thursday and the team sourced spare parts from Zabo Racing, before sitting out the session.

Team Abu Dhabi 5’s Rashed Al-Tayer and Majed Al-Mansoori also sat out pole qualifying.

Team Abu Dhabi’s Class 1 manager Randy Scism said,

There were still a couple of little gremlins that we needed to sort out. The target is the race this afternoon.

2016 UIM Class 1 World Championship – Pole Position times (Friday):

1. Victory 3 – Arif Saif Al-Zafeen (UAE)/Nadir Bin Hendi (UAE) – 2min 45.660sec

2. Team Abu Dhabi 6 – John Tomlinson (USA)/Gary Ballough (USA) – 2min 50.472sec

3. Zabo 91 – Giovanni Carpitella (ITA)/Ian Blacker (GBR) – 3min 01.923sec

Aquasport 99 – Nick Huybens (BEL)/Daniel Cramphorn (GBR) – DNS

Photo: Fiona Pascoe