Team Azerbaijan Hopes To Keep Reliability In Place!
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – July 21, 2009 – It’s amazing what one year can do to make or break a driver and his race team.
In 2008, Swedish sensation Jonas Andersson was struggling just to continue to stay ahead of his financial burdens and keep his racing team alive. Racing under extreme pressure at last years Grand Prix of Russia, the 34 year-old driver from Fruvi qualified fourth and eventually came home with his second career victory. He then used his earnings from the victory to extend his season, eventually taking third in the drivers championship, finishing with 62 points in his best performance in his third year on the U.I.M. F1 H2O World Championship for power boating tour.
“It was a great victory on the Neva River last year and helped to really turn around our season,” said Jonas. “Now this season, with our new great sponsors, the Team Azerbaijan effort looks more promising and with 12 races race’s remaining and we sitting third in the championship just three points out of second, we still have a long way to go in the season and we feel ready to push all the way to the month of December.”
The multi-time F2 World Champion went on to say, “The race here in St. Petersburg is almost a home race for us since it is so close to Scandinavia and now that I have a victory here I will always have good memories of this race circuit as well as a lot of confidence to push us towards more wins on this difficult 2.2 kilometer six pin race facility.”
Jonas has put together a more reliable package this season thus far having failed to finish a race just once in the first four starts. Last season, Andersson had three races he couldn’t complete along with a racing accident in Liuzhou, China completing just 50% of his starts. Two of the four he did complete ended with victories at Doha and St. Petersburg.
His new teammate this season is old friend and fellow Scandinavian driver Marit Stromoy of Norway. She has had a remarkable turnaround in her second full season in F1 racing finishing all four of her race starts in 2009. The 32 year-old pilot who is only the second women to race F1 race boats, arrived for six races last season crashing three times and failing to finish in one other start. Her frustration reached a peak at the pair of Grand Prix’s in China where she failed to start either race causing her to end her campaign earlier than she wanted while missing out on the two Emirates races.
Marit, this year has scored points with three top ten finishes in her four starts with her seventh at the opening event of the season at Portimao in Portugal being her high water mark of her racing career which includes 12 race starts.
Team Azerbaijan heads to the lovely setting of the Neva River for back to back Grand Prix events on Saturday and Sunday the eighth and ninth of August for the 7th Grand Prix of Russia. Fans from around the world will be able to catch all the action on www.f1h2o.com each day beginning at 18:00 local, 15:00 GMT and 10:00 EST on the East Coast of North America.
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