Friday, December 19: Team Sweden’s Jonas Andersson topped the times in the extra free practice session with a fastest lap of 48.365 seconds at the Road to Sharjah–Grand Prix of Sharjah on Khaled Lagoon on Friday afternoon.
Intense thunderstorms and heavy rain inundated the Sharjah area throughout Thursday night and into Friday morning and forced several crews to dry out equipment and carry out a clean-up process before the first extra free practice session. Many access roads to the Corniche were blocked by varying depths of slowly receding flood water.
As a result of the weather, the official press conference for the 310th race in the modern chapter of the sport at the Sharjah Holiday International Hotel was cancelled.
The timetable was duly modified slightly with crews taking part in a 45-minute extra free practice session before a short break and a one-hour free practice at the end of the afternoon.
H2O Racing’s founder Nicoló di San Germano attended the pre-race drivers’ briefing. He said: “Twenty-five years ago we began the Road to Sharjah. We started it all and we have to smile because we are in Sharjah and the weather forecast is good. We are also grateful to Sharjah for all its efforts to make sure the racing could go ahead after the heavy rain. It proves that Sharjah can organise everything perfectly.”
Di San Germano also paid tribute to 10-time World Champion Guido Cappellini’s mother, who passed away recently.
Marit Strømøy was the first to register a lap time at the start of the session with her four-stroke APX V8-engined DAC. The Norwegian clocked a 49.860sec loosener but that was quickly surpassed by Andersson’s opener of 48.368sec in surprisingly good conditions following the overnight tempest.
Peter Morin of the China CTIC Team was quickly into a competitive pace and slotted in behind Andersson with a 48.945sec tour, while Shaun Torrente opened his account with a 49.090sec run.
Team Sweden were the early pace-setters, however, and Grant Trask delivered a useful run of 48.563sec to move up to second in the rankings after 12 minutes of the session. Alec Weckström and Alberto Comparato were yet to take to the water.
All 20 boats had made an appearance on the lagoon when a very brief yellow flag interrupted progress with just over 25 minutes on the clock.
Heading into the final 20 minutes, Andersson (48.365sec) still led the way from team-mate Trask, Torrente, Morin, Strømøy and the F1 Atlantic Team’s Ben Jelf.
As the afternoon sun made a welcome appearance and began to beat down on Khalid Lagoon, the Swede’s earlier run was enough to top the times in the session from Trask and Torrente.
