ABU DHABI - 26 November - To say the start of the second-half of the UIM F1 H2O World Championship series kicked off with a bang, would be saying it mildly. As we speak, four different teams are scrambling to fix their drivers racing boats, on this off day, as the championship moves on to this Thursday and Friday afternoon for the fifth and penultimate round of the 2013 championship at the Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
To understand where we are at the moment, let's look back in chronological order in last Saturday's Grand Prix of Qatar. Seconds after the start Finland's Sami Selio got bumped from the side and was then launched into the air and like a missile landed on the front cockpit of Italian Francesco Cantando. Thankfully neither driver was hurt in the accident but their boats, well, both craft were crippled to a point of either being able to be run this weekend.
For the Mad Croc racing driver Selio, the timing couldn't have been better for the two-time World Champion as he had just purchased a boat a few days before and will have a fresh hull ready to go this weekend.
"It's funny, I feel almost like Nostradamus since we just got the boat recently and now I really am going to need it this weekend," said the "Finnish Flyer." "We are going to get it set up to my liking and hopefully I won't miss a beat since we are still in line for a shot at another title before Sharjah is on in three weeks."
At the same time, the Singha Team leading driver and winner of two events in Abu Dhabi, Cantando, isn't sure if his boat is repairable and may have to sit this race out with his other contracted drivers ready to race their machines on the waters of the corniche opposite the city of Abu Dhabi.
"It's not a good feeling to have," said Francesco. "We had qualified well and were ready to push for a great podium and it all fell apart before the first corner. It's discouraging, but, who said racing was easy?"
The driver from Milan, who has more starts than any other active driver with 143, is hoping a miracle can be done to fix the front part of the cockpit that took most of the brunt of the crash impact when Selio landed on his BLAZE hull at the start.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the paddock, two separate American drivers are fixing their boats as well, as a result of colliding into each other two laps from the end of last weekends Grand Prix of Qatar.
Qatar Team driver Shaun Torrente, who was chasing down race leader and teammate Alex Carella of Italy, came through the final corner and he and Terry Rinker of Team Azerbaijan got together each running a different line through corner. The result, Terry ended up doing a snap barrel roll to a stop and Shaun kept going, on to take his first victory, after his teammate Carella broke down seconds later and came to a stop losing his chance of his eighth victory and a lead in the championship.
Both drivers, who live only a couple of hundred of kilometers away from each other in the State of Florida, have been busy making repairs since the boats came out of the containers from Doha.
Terry, at the Team Abu Dhabi's shops just outside of the city, while Shaun getting special attention to his left sponson from his team members on a very warm day with temperatures hovering around 30 degrees Celsius.
"We did a lot of celebrating the other evening with our first ever victory," said Shaun. "However, now it's back to reality and it's time to get down to making the boat right while we are now leading in the championship fight."
For his fellow Floridian, "We are really disappointed on how things turned out in Doha," said Terry. "We were shooting for a top five result but, it didn't come about after the incident with Shaun. We are just now getting used to the DAC boat and will get to know it even more today as were work like crazy to get it back to 100% condition."
Wednesday will be the start of the Abu Dhabi Water Festival with the UIM F1 H2O World Championship race kicking off a nine day run of activities that will also hi-lite UIM F4, UIM Aquabike, UIM Nations Cup and UIM Class-1 offshore racing.
Thursday the 28th will see official qualifying at 15:30 local, 11:30 GMT and 06:30 Eastern Standard Time on the East Coast of North America. Nineteen drivers from 14 different nations and 4 continents are ready to celebrate the 20th year of coming to Abu Dhabi for the 22nd Grand Prix race along the lovely corniche at the jewel of the Middle East, Abu Dhabi.
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