Victory Team’s chief engineer Luciano Barbati, is confident that they can win next weekend’s race Lake Race in the Class One International category.

The second round of the ABPA Offshore Championship will be held on Lake Ozark, Missouri and the Victory team of Salem Al Adidi and Essa Al Ali lie second after finishing behind James Sheppard and Steve Curtis in Miss Geico at Cocoa Beach.

Barbati was pleased with the start to the season:

We are going into the second race with points and a lot of confidence.

This week the conditions are going to be totally different, and that would require totally different things in the boat – the set-up will be different, the balance will be different and hopefully, the speed will be different as well.

For one, we know that this Victory boat is reliable and that puts one thing out of the way for us as a team.

This week, we will need to work on the distribution in the boat and achieve higher speeds so that we can be a real threat to the rest of the field, particularly to some of the world champions out here.

This is sweet water on Lake Ozark and everything will be totally different compared to the opening race.

I think we can be counted as genuine contenders here this week.

Barbati was also pleased to see the evolution of both Al Adidi and Al Ali in the cockpit of Boat No.3:

It’s been a huge learning curve for both of them, and they’ve done well to put up some points on the board after the first race.

Now it is time for them to put their heads together once again and aim for the top spot.

2019 ABPA Offshore Championship – Class One International

1st – Miss GEICO – 104 points
2nd – Victory Team – 93 points
3rd – 222 Offshore – 83 points
4th – Lucas Oil – 74 points
5th – Zabo Racing – 66 points