Tuesday, March 11: Thani Al-Qamzi has been there, done that and got all but one T-shirt after years of competing in the UIM F1H2O World Championship.
The long-time Team Abu Dhabi stalwart is a veteran of 158 Grand Prix starts and has claimed 10 race wins and 45 podium finishes in an F1H2O career that started with a retirement and a seventh place at the two races in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah in 2000. But one title has eluded the veteran: he has never won the World Drivers’ Championship, despite leading Team Abu Dhabi to the Teams’ title on several occasions.
Al-Qamzi, 46, hails from Abu Dhabi and would dearly love to end his career with the Drivers’ Championship, but that goal becomes increasingly difficult as the competition gets stronger each year.
Thani finished as runner-up in the World Championship to his present team manager Guido Cappellini in 2009 and repeated the feat to finish just a single point adrift of Jonas Andersson in 2021. He has also finished third on six occasions (2006-2007, 2011-2012, 2018 and 2022) and fourth three-times (2010, 2017 and 2019), but the top spot on the podium has cruelly eluded the Emirati for half a century of racing at the top of the sport.
His last win came at the Regione Sardegna Grand Prix of Italy in 2022, in a race where he claimed one of three career pole positions, although he did finish on the podium again the following year in Sharjah.
His first podium finish was in Sharjah in 2001 with a Seebold hull while running as a member of the Waircom Mare Magnum team alongside Franco Leidi. He then recorded a first second-place finish with the Emirates F1 Team at the Grand Prix of Germany in Stralsund in 2003. The major breakthrough came three years later when he finished behind Scott Gillman and Cappellini in the title race and claimed three podium finishes, including a maiden Grand Prix success in Sharjah.
Four more podium finishes and race wins in Xi’an and Qatar followed in 2007 and a second success in Sharjah rounded off a disappointing 2008 season running with the new Team Abu Dhabi and the late Ahmad Al-Hameli for the first time. Victory in Portugal and another five podium finishes were earned in 2009, three podiums came his way in 2010 and he won the race in Liuzhou the following year.
Retirement on Doha Bay in 2012 potentially cost him a first world title after he finished the season strongest with runner-up spots in Liuzhou and Abu Dhabi and victory in Sharjah yet again.
After several years of mixed results, including several more podiums, the Emirati’s next win came at home off the Abu Dhabi Breakwater in 2018 in a season that included three second places but was ruined by a pair of DNFs in India and Sharjah.
He returned to winning ways in San Nazzaro in 2021 on his way to second in that year’s shortened World Championship and was triumphant again in Sardinia the following year where a retirement at the last round on Khaled Lagoon may well have cost him that coveted first world title.
After finishing eighth in the title race last year during a disappointing campaign for Team Abu Dhabi, Al-Qamzi will approach the new season with renewed vigour. He teams up with Erik Stark again and his cousin Rashed Al-Qemzi, bidding yet again to claim that one T-shirt that has been elusive during his illustrious 25-year F1H2O career.
