Twenty three drivers have now all arrived to contest the forty-fourth running of a powerboat ‘Gran Premio’ in Campione D’Italia and twenty-two of them will be working out how to catch the UIM F2 World Championship leader Rashed Al Qemzi.
The Team Abu Dhabi driver spent Thursday morning testing a new selection of race propellers before making his way to the tiny enclave situated between Switzerland and Italy.
Ok the water conditions back in Italy where we tested were flat but time in the boat is never wasted
said Al Qemzi.
I know the weather forecast for the weekend means the water conditions will be tricky, similar to last year, but I will still push for the win. I need the biggest gap in the championship table to take the pressure off before we go to Portugal and that means twenty points from this race is the target.
One of those twenty two drivers hoping to pile the pressure on will be Sweden’s Erik Edin. Fresh from his success at winning the 2017 UIM F2 European Championship title Edin now hopes that it will ‘kick-start’ his World Championship title aspirations.
Of course I can use that momentum to win here in Campione
he said. It’s perhaps an understatement to say he hasn’t had the start to the 2107 season that he had hoped for.
Sure in the beginning we had a problem with the balance of the Molgaard hull as the new minimum weight limit meant we had to add twenty kilos to it but by Tonsberg we were back on track. Now following my jump start there I’ve made it harder for myself. Though if you look at the championship table you will see that there are a lot of quick drivers in a worse place than I am, so there is still hope.
When you look at those World Championship positions there are some unfamiliar names there at the top of the standings, including the man currently occupying third place, Nelson Morin. The French driver might have won several races back in his National Championship but he’s now finding things totally different.
The biggest difference is that I’m up against more boats in qualifying
said the China CTIC driver.
Because the boat I race is an old F1 Moore hull, the time trials are harder because it’s not so fast. So the first objective is that I come back with the boat in one piece, the second is that I gain more experience.
By following those guidelines he has also finished in the points and with some new race propellers this weekend perhaps now a podium finish could be on the cards.
The first ‘Free Practice’ is set to get under way at 10:25 local time on Saturday morning followed by Qualifying Q1-Q2-Q3 at 14:30 in the afternoon.
