Due to the race taking place on a narrow stretch of the River Saone the Race Officials had decided to choose a ‘rolling start’ rather than a ‘dead engine’ pontoon start. After two laps out came the green flag and Seliö sped off into the distance making the clear water ahead of him really count in his favour.

 

As the race reached the fifteenth lap Team Sharjah’s Ferdinand Zandbergen was towed back to the pontoon with electrical problems. Earlier in the day the Dutch racer had gone out to test his BaBa raceboat in Free Practice, this was after the team had worked through the night to replace all the electrics following his crash in yesterday’s Q3. Unfortunately, Zandbergen crashed this time without completing a lap. With no time to swap the electrics before the Grand Prix start, he lined up in his grid spot with no realistic chance of completing the full sixty lap race.

 

 

When Zandbergen spoke to PRW he said,

 

My weekend started out great and I was incredibly happy to make it into Q3, but then I was too eager, and barrel rolled on a wave on my first lap. The team worked hard overnight on my boat, for which I’m very thankful for but then in the free practice unfortunately the same happened to me at the other end of the course. Not the way I wanted to start my first F1 season, but I see it as a lesson in gaining experience for the rest of the year.

 

Portugal’s Duarte Benavente became the next race casualty when he went out with mechanical problems a lap later.

 

As the race began to settle down Seliö was maintaining a four second gap between himself and Torrente until lap thirty-seven when the Finn slowed down with a misfiring engine.

 

When he spoke to PRW the deeply frustrated Seliö said,

 

This hurts. That came totally unexpectedly, one minute I was comfortably ahead of Torrente, the next my engine was down to four thousand revs and he had passed me.

 

Throughout the race I didn’t really feel any pressure and thought I had everything under control. I had started to put in some good laps time then the stator broke. There was no warning or any sign that this was about to fail and even new one’s are not fallible.

 

Selio’s departure saw Torrente move into a lead which he never looked like surrendering.

 

The result underlined their status as overwhelming favourites for a fifth world team title and suggested that the two team-mates could go on to battle it out to decide this year’s individual F1H2O driver’s crown.

 

Peter Morin of the China CTIC Team took third place to become the first Frenchman to secure a podium finish in his home Grand Prix event. Hi team-mate Philippe Chiappe, one of only three drivers in F1H2O history to have claimed a hat-trick of world titles, was another to endure frustration on the day as plummeted down the field with a broken propeller with just ten laps remaining. He quickly came back to the pontoon where his mechanics fitted a new one which allowed Chiappe to head back out and claim ninth place. This was the third propeller that had failed him this weekend.

 

Finnish rookie Alec Weckstrom finished fourth in Macon from Sweden’s reigning F1H2O World Champion, Jonas Andersson, with Norway’s Marit Stromoy completing the top six.

 

Stromoy posted the following,

 

Not what I dreamed about, but not too bad either. It was a tough and long race of sixty laps in difficult conditions. Both me and my boat got a lot of beating, but we’re still in one piece. Valuable World Championship points collected though.

 

Next stop for the F1H2O World Championship is San Nazzaro, Italy, where back-to-back Grand Prix races take place on the Po River on 16^th and 17^th July.

 

This has been a happy hunting ground for Team Abu Dhabi, who have regularly trained and tested there in recent times under Italian powerboat racing legend and Team Manager, Guido Cappellini.

 

Al Qemzi’s took victory there last September and the vastly experienced Emirati driver, who now has thirty-nine career podium finishes to his name as well as eight Grand Prix wins, still passionately believes he can secure a maiden world drivers’ title, twenty-two years after entering the F1H2O arena.

 

He enjoys a unique partnership with Torrente, and while the American would love to grab the world crown for a third time, no-one would be happier if Al Qemzi were to finally come through to take the honours, after five third place finishes, and two runners-up seasons.

It certainly was a day of mixed fortunes for the Sharjah Team with both Seliö and Ferdinand Zandbergen making it into the final qualifying session Q3. The only other team to get both drivers into Q3 were their championship rivals Team Abu Dhabi. They were joined by only one of the four French drivers entered for their home Grand Prix and that was Peter Morin from the China CTIC Team along with the Finnish driver Alec Weckstrom from Gillman Racing.

This season they have changed the format in Q3, where the top six boats from Q2 instead of running two laps one by one in reverse order dictated by the times set in Q2 now run all together for ten minutes. The reigning World Champion Jonas Andersson just missed out on a place the top six by 0.07 seconds and he will start tomorrow in seventh position ahead of Marit Stromoy and Philippe Chiappe, who has announced that this season will be his last one in F1H2O.

As the final ten minutes of qualifying got underway Zandbergen headed out onto the course to set a time but as he was entering the circuit, he got caught out by the wash created ironically by Seliö and barrel rolled his BaBa hull. It certainly was a disappointing end to what had been a fabulous qualifying session for the young Dutch driver.

When Seliö spoke to PRW he said,

 

I know he has the pace. It was just a frustrating ‘rookie’ mistake to make especially when there were only five other boats on the circuit at the time. The important thing is that he’s fine and there was no damage to his BaBa hull. The mechanics will change over the electrics and check over the engine because it would be an absolute shame if we needed to change it over as he would then drop to the back of the grid which would totally compromise his race.

With Zandbergen safely ashore Seliö went out and posted a time of 32.20 around the tight 1500 metre Macon circuit. Just like in the previous two qualifying sessions this became the time for everyone else to beat. With five minutes remaining Team Abu Dhabi’s Shaun Torrente set the second fastest time, then lap after lap he tried in vain to snatch pole position off Seliö. As the time was ebbing away Torrente was getting closer and closer eventually coming within 0.11 seconds of pole before Seliö went out and bettered his own time posting a 32.02.

Setting his twenty-sixth F1 career pole position Seliö had remained on the outside of the circuit just in case his time was bettered. He told PRW,

 

I was just waiting to see if they could catch me. Honestly, I am so relieved because it has been a long while since I was last on pole as there was always some minor problem that would get in the way. I feel confident enough now to really race the boat hard with no nagging feeling in the back of my mind feeling that something is about to fail. It’s great to get pole position in my pocket, now I must make the most of it around this challenging course come Sunday afternoon.

Both Torrente and Al Qemzi will have Seliö in their sights as they start from second and third positions. Going into this weekend’s opening round they were strongly fancied to deliver a fifth consecutive world team title to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi.

Torrente had started the weekend in confident style, setting the fastest time in the previous day’s opening practice session as he put behind him last year’s disappointing third-place finish.

 

Al Qemzi has even more reason not to look back, after seeing his bid for a first world title fall short by a solitary point just over six months ago. He is using every bit of his twenty-two-years of F1H2O experience to make his mark in France.

Torrente said,

 

The way the championship ended last season was rough, so while it was definitely not the way I wanted it to end, at the same time, I was super proud of the team. Sometimes, when things don’t go right, you really find out what your team is all about. It was just a matter of ‘Let’s get this done’, and we came really close. It’s the first year that I’ve raced for Abu Dhabi that I wasn’t the World Champion, so let’s correct that and make it the only year.

The drivers will be back out mid Sunday morning for the one-hour F1 warm up session starting at 11:15. That will be followed later in the afternoon with the parade lap at 15:45 before the start of the UIM F1H2O Grand Prix of France at 16:05.